NickyDee07938

Another low budget war-set film that failed to do its due diligence. I'm literally 4.5 mins in and already frustrated for everything else to come. When filmmakers, or more precisely storytellers, do not have direct experience in the field in which they are narrating, they have an obligation to research - and research the ass out of the subject. When they fail to do that, they fail in creating a world in which audiences can suspend their disbelief. There is simply no excuse for laziness in scene setting or character presentation especially when audiences are far more historically clued up. So, for anyone who's interested, just watch the first 4.5 mins and observe...... 1) uniforms have staybrite buttons. They should be brass. Such a small detail isn't hard to get right. Buttons of the era up to WW2 (any will do as you're unlikely to see insignia detail) are freely and widely available online. Staybrite are horrible and shout modernity.

2) Our officer, the Lieutenant interacts with a Corporal (stripes on his left arm) referring to him as 'Captain'.....twice just in case you think you misheard it.....

3) The 'Captain' offers up a salute to the Lt first - not the way its done. You salute the rank, not the man. If indeed he was a Captain the Lt would have come to a smart attention and offered up the salute to the new arrival.

It's pretty basic stuff to get right to be fair. The script is just plain awful if the actors are regurgitating what's on the page. And it's not the first film I've seen in the low budget war genre that has made this simple error..........and there's a lot more wrong here that I could labour on with. But to keep it short when you don't have much in the way of budget you have to make the most of what you do have. Be less pompous, cut the narrative back and tell a simple story well. War-set stories are ones where scrimping on accuracy simply isn't the way to best present your story and keep your audience engaged.

Young, wistful, enthusiastic but oh so uneducated in the wiles of delivering, and more importantly understanding, what makes a classic horror film. The "How to Butcher a Classic 101" class has just graduated. As other reviewers have already conceded, and most admittedly are likely casual film watchers and appreciators rather than bona fide filmmakers, trying to lay open all the errors, omissions, technical inadequacies, and downright gaffs that were made in the process of bringing this to the screen, could fill a tome the size of Plato's Illiad. A word to the wise - the great villains of original horror remain in the shadows for the best part of 2/3 (ish) of a movie's run time, maybe emerging briefly over the films course to raise the tension, but NEVER in a manner that reveals so much that the fear, anticipation, and downright surprise, is lost. Even when you know who the villain is and what's at stake. Look at Aliens (okay not a horror per se, but was it exciting? Even though you knew who the villains were?). It's all about building to a climax - as in most things. Sequels, prequels, re-imaginings, reworkings, remakes all (and I mean in terms of recent franchises) seem to have forgotten this one, important, nay almost singularly most critical, point of storytelling; never reveal the source of the fear until the audience is so engrossed they cannot help but watch for the outcome. Alien is a classic example of this. The Thing, Halloween (original), The Howling etc etc etc. All classics without peer. Because screenwriters, and filmmakers knew then what made people tick. The fundamental failing of horror franchises today is in capitulating to what they perceive as an audience call for kill-count irregardless of story, plot, or character motivation. But that's not what entertains the majority; that's an unassailable fact. It's story, suspense, fear of the unknown, the unseen, the darkness - core human fears that have existed since the beginning of man's time on earth. That is why today's executives who greenlight these woeful, under-developed, derivative, kill-count focused insults to the classics, will never support anything that seems like it's a 'throw-back' to decades past ie. Good, solid, original, developed, and story-focused that tap into primal fears. They have been fed dross, blood, gore, violence without cause, and now doing what they know through nurture, feed the rest of us the same slop. Somehow, somewhere, someone needs to get a firm hand on all this and go back to the basics, to the historically accepted methods and modes of storytelling that have been in existence since before the time of Aristotle. It isn't about changing the shape of the wheel, only the material the wheel is made of. It's about feeding audience expectation but in an unexpected way. It's so simple. Sadly, the young studio executives of today, and the filmmakers they exalt, seem to think changing the wheel shape makes them an auteur and worthy of admiration. The wakeup they all need is that the opposite is true. Jeepers Creepers: Reborn was bad in sooooo many ways, not least in its awful script. The writer should hang his/her/their head in shame. The executive who read it and thought 'yep, this one's ready to go' needs sacking. Cos he/she/they've just cost the studio/investor a good few quid that they'll never, and yes you know it, never get back. It wasn't worthy of being called a production ready script (and I know, cos I write, and have done for 25 years) - by at least another ten drafts. And that's being optimistic. Lighting, camera, sound, VFX (so much bad greenscreen it made my eyes hurt), production design, direction, and performances - all were dismally woeful and so much less than the original story deserved as a follow up. A director's primary job on set is to get the actors to deliver - to elicit believable, truthful presentation of character. That's a skill not everyone has. Clearly this director doesn't have it either. Dee Wallace, what were you thinking? When the foundation of your movie isn't properly formulated is it any wonder that everything else built upon it is shaky? Whilst they've butchered Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, TCM, Carrie, The Hills Have Eyes, IKWYDLS, with re-imaginings and some with untold numbers of sequels, this one, Jeepers Creepers: Reborn stands out as one of the worst to date IMHO. And I wouldn't be at all amazed if, as a franchise, it is subsequently consigned to the annals of history as a golden opportunity that went wide, oh so very wide, of the classic quality mark. Oh boy, can I get a refund on the time I've lost?!

Good storytelling isn't about changing the shape of the wheel. It's about making it work as a wheel should but by using different materials. You have to give an audience what they expect, just in an unexpected way. Since 1975 shark movies have tapped into the public consciousness but, technology aside, none have managed to bring the same sense of dread and foreboding as Spielberg's monster hit. And much of that lies in the storytelling and the increasing reliance on VFX to generate the antagonist. There has to be more to make a film worthy in this subgenre of horror than just a few pretty young people out on the open ocean in a contrived manipulated 'reason d' etre'. There has to be heart, soul, emotion, connectivity with audiences on some deeper psychological level - a story that touches audiences who can identify with the core struggles of the characters in some way. If that is absent everyone portayed becomes singularly dimensional, and uninteresting. There is no reason or desire for the audience to identify with or root for the characters. And if the setting is to be almost entirely waterborne then the actions of the characters have to be strong, consistent, natural, and more importantly believable. Horror has a habit of throwing up, and throwing us, characters with so little common sense we struggle to give any credibility to their behaviour. We almost revel in the fact their stupidity will ultimately end in their demise. This comes down to the development of a good strong narrative with well fleshed out 'real' characters who act in ways that audiences can identify with. That doesn't mean stereotypes, or cardboard cutouts, but archetypes, flawed in their realness. When I began screenwriting 25 years ago my script guru taught me one valuable lesson above all I remember in my creations - "write what you know or what you can easily research so that truth is the foundation of your story". So many films I see forget the importance of this. Storytellers that work, in this case, shark movies seem to default to individual belief, not truth, and it harms the end product. And doing so isn't some method of creating suspense, or compressing truth to adhere to an 80 minute running time. It simply is a case of failing to marry truth to suspense as a vehicle for entertainment - because reality is far more threatening, scary, intimidating, and ultimately fatal than anything you could imagine or believe as truth but which isn't. And that brings me conveniently to The Reef: Stalked which unsatisfactory presents, yet again, a Great White as the ultimate ocean threat, off what I can only assume are Polynessian islands in the Pacific. Whilst we are never told where they are the islanders featured suggest to me of say Samoa, or Fiji. In warm Pacific waters the GW isn't the threat it is of temperate waters. Tigers are. And some of them grow incredibly big. Plus of course they are known tacticians and hunters, pursuing prey over long distances - stalking them. In an instant the face of the narrative changes. It presents something familiar but with a distinct difference that provides truthfully more fear and suspense. GWs are apex hunters but they aren't renowned for being methodical scheming pursuers of prey. So truth here is manipulated again for the purpose of shamelessly following trend. And as an audience, and filmmaker I expect more of the story's antagonist than mere regurgitation. The Reef that preceded this was again a GW but the facts that served as a source for it were actually about a huge Tiger shark off Townsvillle and the boat was actually a trawler not a yacht. Which would have presented a more terrifying journey for audiences, truth or the filmmakers idea of truth? I could go on 'ad infinitum' and pick this film, and story, apart but that's not the point of this review. I admire filmmakers tenacity, and I know from first hand experience how hard it is to make a movie. There are so many obstacles to climb over I just feel making your own to add into the mix doesn't help anyone. What I will add just as a final thought though is that VFX doesn't have to be bad, or unrealistic. The cost of creating animatronic sharks is so horrendously expensive CG is the most cost effective way these days. Sadly. The best example I have seen was in "Kon Tiki". If you haven't seen this 2012 movie then do. CG sharks can be made to look terrifyingly real. And in that the truth is assaulting the senses of what we know to be fake and what we struggle to reconcile as real. We have so many miles to travel as filmmakers as we see audiences get 'film smarter', but also when audience attention spans shorten you simply cannot afford to lose them over issues that could be resolved early in the process - a story that is well thought out, smart, and built upon fundamental truths about which there can be no real valid argument.