Hunting Humans

This movie really took me by surprise. For the first few minutes I thought it was a fairly standard issue low budget slasher flick, but just as it looked like it was going to take a nose dive, it took a major, unexpected left turn and became a really engrossing and fun ride. I can't say much without giving anything away, but I'll say this - the writer/director did a terrific job working with what could have been cliche'd material, and turned in a film that delivers. Clearly done on a shoe string budget, the movie transcends its low cost and entertains massively.

For a LOW BUDGET FILM, this was actually a fun watch; my wife and I took it in on a rainy Sunday afternoon here in Knoxville. It was included on a four movie DVD with a British film from 1970 entitled "The Beast in the Cellar," but I digress...

O.K. the previous review just before mine is correct about the opening. A famous on-line reviewer once wrote that if you see a woman's breasts in the first five minutes, it is a bad movie. The narration was annoying, just as the previous review mentioned. However, if you're killing some time, give this movie a chance. The writing is pretty well done after the first eight to ten minutes of the movie. The plot is about a serial killer, and there is an interesting twist. THE MAIN PROBLEM I had with the film was THE SOUND. One could hear the lead character's voice, but the supporting cast's voices were harder to hear for all of the office scenes.

The reviewer before me commented on the bad acting. Not all of the acting was bad, just most of it was... The lead character and his antagonist were played by good actors, IMO. Many of the film angles were creative, surprisingly so for such a low budget film. A trick the main character plays on a detective is darkly funny.

Finally, this is no "Silence of the Lambs," "Seven," or "American Psycho." But it is somewhat original, and it has a good plot, which makes it a fun view.

So I got this movie recommended by a horror-film buff at the local videostore, and I somewhat appreciate that he told me about this movie. It has a good plot and great potential to do something with it. It has a good soundtrack with mostly electronic songs on it. But it felt too much like a student project film for some course on film-making.

The main actor gets annoying fast and can't deliver dialogue at all. (Probably why they cast him in a serial killer role) And having the serial killer talk about what he's doing the entire length of the movie gets really boring and drawn out. I don't know where they got any of these actors, and I hope I'm not "fortunate" to see them in another film. The plot itself falls flat when the multi-twist ending gets pushed in your face and you feeel like screaming, "Oh man!" and feel ultimately disappointed. And if the main guy gives me one more Nietzsche quote, I'm gonna be his new killer.

Overall, a good concept which goes dry and actors who can't act or speak so they speak over the action. And the quality is sub par if that means anything. 4/10

I found myself enjoying this. I understand what goes in to an indie production. I know what it's like to work on a low-budget feature. There were some decent twists in the end. AND a good story from start to finish. The low-budget aspects came through quite often, and some of the acting was spotty, but I really respect what the filmmakers were trying to accomplish. I enjoyed Ganz's acting.

The bad- for the most part was the sound mix. It sucked, you could pick out where sound tracks were added- not much was seamless. I don't know if this was shot on 16mm or super -16, but you could often hear the camera sound. Until I heard the camera sound i thought iit was shot on a cheap miniDV cmaera. i don't know why the footage looks below average, but it wasn't too distracting.

But i'd have to say that the orchestral score ROCKED. it was great. don't know where you got it, but it was really good.

Ultimately I respect what the filmmakers were doing, and I say keep rockin'. There was a good story here. Just get better actors and a better camera next time. Rick and Kevin rock, though.

Aric Blue hunts humans. He's very good at it. He learns people's daily patterns then exploits them. However, problems arise when a rival serial killer learns Aric's patterns. At first, I wasn't expecting much. The shoddy photography and disjointed editing gave it the feel of bad backyard movie, but the style soon grew on me. The old cliché of a low budget giving a film a documentary feel kicked in. I found the murder in the pre-title sequence somewhat engrossing. The sequence was essentially MOS footage accompanied by sardonic voice over from the serial killer. Very nice. Unfortunately, the titles warned me that the film would eventually fall apart. How? Well, first the titles credited all of the actors in the film.

That's okay. The scary part were the crew credits, where many of the names of the actors reappeared in other capacities. Since it is rare to find excellent crew people who can really act, or excellent actors who work on crews, I correctly feared for the quality of the movie. The bottom line was that the film managed to develop some good energy when it stuck to essentially MOS (mit-out-sound) footage accompanied by voice over. However, there wasn't a single good dialogue scene in the film. Technically, the sound recording itself was horrible, but not anywhere as bad as the acting itself. The lead, Rick Ganz, is adequate, but I would venture to say that the guy who plays Aric's annoying co-worker gave the worst performance I have ever seen in a commercially released film. This is all a shame because this film offered a fresh and original perspective on the tired serial killer genre, and small snatches of it worked reasonably well. This was a frustrating movie. I wish it were better.