I found the bulk of the story in this actually fairly interesting. Trail guide Drake Jacobs takes a group of somewhat unprepared hikers on to the Appalachian Trail. Then he takes them off trail ("what do you need a trail guide for if you're just going to hike the trail. You can just follow the tourists," he said.) and they end up lost and having to contend with - well - something. Some being. Some creature. Some force. Some disease. It wasn't really entirely clear what they were dealing with. Which actually made the movie more mysterious and actually even compelling. You follow along because you do want the mystery to be revealed, and because for the most part the performances from little known actors were decent enough.
The problems with "Beacon Point," though, come at the beginning and end of the movie - probably the two most important parts of a movie. The movie opens by introducing us to Zoe - one of the hikers - but I thought it did so in a rather silly way and at least for that opening scene she didn't strike me as a serious character - which was too bad, because she emerges as the movie's most serious and central character. We then move on to Drake's confrontation with his boss before the hiking trip begins - a confrontation that served absolutely no purpose, because it had nothing really to do with the story that then unfolded. The movie wouldn't have unfolded any differently at all without that unnecessary scene. Meanwhile, after all the mystery about exactly what's going on, the movie resolves almost nothing. So you spend an hour and a half watching this and get left high and dry in the end. What happened to this group of campers? I guess we'll never know.
And yet, I'll still give this a 6/10. The meat of the story and the mystery involved was compelling enough and kept me watching, even if, in the end, it let me down with that unsatisfying ending.
The problems with "Beacon Point," though, come at the beginning and end of the movie - probably the two most important parts of a movie. The movie opens by introducing us to Zoe - one of the hikers - but I thought it did so in a rather silly way and at least for that opening scene she didn't strike me as a serious character - which was too bad, because she emerges as the movie's most serious and central character. We then move on to Drake's confrontation with his boss before the hiking trip begins - a confrontation that served absolutely no purpose, because it had nothing really to do with the story that then unfolded. The movie wouldn't have unfolded any differently at all without that unnecessary scene. Meanwhile, after all the mystery about exactly what's going on, the movie resolves almost nothing. So you spend an hour and a half watching this and get left high and dry in the end. What happened to this group of campers? I guess we'll never know.
And yet, I'll still give this a 6/10. The meat of the story and the mystery involved was compelling enough and kept me watching, even if, in the end, it let me down with that unsatisfying ending.