29 Needles

I had really high hopes for this film after hearing so many rave reviews of it being dark and disturbing. The poor acting, effects and just overall quality really degraded any feeling or story this film was trying to convey. I found myself wanting to fast forward through the horribly slow and uninteresting dialogue between characters and then the "disturbing" bits was essentially porn with some dribbles of fake blood here and there.

There's real sex scenes and a tiny bit of blood, but nothing too bad at all. If you ever watched porn before, this film will not shock you.

And secondly, the film is very, very, very gay. It's basically gay fetish porn, so if watching close-ups of guys having sex is not your thing, then you're going to be looking at your watch for most of the time. Because about 1/3 of the film is actually close-ups of men masturbating. I'm not even joking. The film rarely goes 2 minutes without showing some guy wanking. It could probably be turned into a fun drinking game, if you are so inclined.

And thirdly, more important, the amateurish level of filmmaking is really distracting from the story. The editing, camera angles, lighting, and most of all audio quality is worse than what you would get just by using a mid-range mobile phone. For most of the dialogue (and there's a lot of it that goes on and on and on and on) you're going to be asking yourself "What did he just say" because it's drowned out by ambient noise.

The director clearly had a pretty good vision for the story and I found it quite fascinating to get insight into the dark underworld of gay fetish clubs that I know very little about. But sadly, the lack of basic filmmaking skills makes the whole thing terrible in all the wrong ways and rather boring.

Truthfully a masterpiece of independent filmmaking. The cinematography, acting, writing, and soundtrack are absolutely fantastic. Brooke Berry really threw himself into a very physically demanding role and embraced the character fully. An excellent and fascinating look into a man's descent into a hellish new reality through sex and violence. Highly recommended.

I watch A LOT of what most would consider extreme horror, and one of my biggest complaint it that they focus on the gore. Ignoring that either the actors suck or there isn't really a story to support the extreme gore. 29 Needles fixes this problem. Not only is the gore on point, but the story is well written and the cast is awesome! This is one body horror movie that isn't gross for gross sake. It actually has a purpose and meaning behind it. This is the directors/writers first film.....I can't wait for the next one!

Here is my review: fantastic!

I love abstract and thought provoking films. 29 Needles is perfect for that.

This is definitely not a movie for everyone. But for those of us into the Under belly of cinema, 29 Needles just doesn't get any better than that.