I made the mistake of watching this cinematic trainwreck when fear.net streamed it as one of their free movies. I will say right now that free is too high a price to pay for seeing this abomination. From beginning to end, it demonstrates utter ineptitude in every way.
The only positives were the few decent performances by the actors whose characters were written so carelessly and given relatively small parts: Slasher, Simon, and Kylie were the only memorable ones in a remotely positive light, and all were handled so poorly as to be shockingly offensive. Simon in particular, as one of the few rather non-token, non-stereotypical gay characters, was completely botched.
Of the rest of the cast and characters, only Lin stood out much, but most glaring of all was the fact that her character was literally forgotten about by the scriptwriters. Not that the script was a tightly-composed affair; character motivations and personalities shift like a summer breeze. Characters do things that are completely inconsistent with the way they were thirty seconds earlier, or do things that no person would ever do in any such situation. These moments make the weaknesses of the script so flagrant, showing that the scriptwriter needed to have something happen and forced it to, without any logical reason or progression to the event. What few characters actually get any modicum of development are by and large completely unsympathetic, and the others are nothing but ciphers, placeholders as insulting as 'the black guy' or 'the girl'.
Worst of all are the two leads, who were not only poorly-written but also astoundingly badly-acted. Mimi inexplicably keeps taking her clothes off (yet showing nothing thanks to incongruously oddly-framed shots) and sitting in the floor whenever she gets flustered. The single actual nudity in the film is awkward and completely gratuitous, as well as hypocritical and actually nauseating, but the filmmakers clearly didn't intend it that way.
In fact, the entire film can be described as hypocritical and nauseating, and probably not what the filmmakers intended. It accomplishes nothing, says nothing, and does nothing but offend. Everything in the film happens because the script says so, not because it makes any sense or is any kind of logical progression. Nothing is coherent about it, and although there are moments where it's clear the film is trying to make some sort of statement, no such statement is ever made in any way comprehensible to the audience.
Unlike a well-written story of this genre, which would build the tension gradually until the last ten or twenty minutes of breakneck excitement ending the film, this builds no tension but functions on sheer exasperation of the audience. By the time the last twenty minutes finally arrive, they are nonchalantly paraded across the screen and leave no impression.
Films don't have to have a huge budget to be good. Quality is determined by good acting, good direction, and good scripting. This film, however, was overwhelmingly badly-acted, hamfistedly-scripted, and hideously-directed. Many films of this type are offensive to minorities that they include for no real reason despite inability to write convincingly, but this film not only manages to botch its attempt to handle minorities in a sensitive way, it also manages to offend everyone else too.
Anyone with pretty much any sensibilities to offend will be offended by this miserable excuse for a film. You have been warned. It's an hour and a half you will never be able to get back, and that is the most tragic thing of all about it.
2 out of 3 found this helpful.
Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink