The Falling

I was at the premier for the falling last night and I was impressed with the film. There was a very deep story, the characters were interesting and there was some very good acting. By the same token however, in a couple of scenes the acting was not weak, just inconsistent with the rest of the film. The moves at a fairly good pace, there is a good blend of action in the story. The film was shot entirely in the Seattle area, so locals do see familiar landmarks. The score was appropriate and helped the mood of the film. Some would see the story as a bit dark, but there is no easy way to convey its story in a light hearted way. Overall a very good film, hopefully the story is continued in the future.

In an age where it seems that practically everybody and their mums is trying to break into the film business and various festivals and streaming video sites help these amateur auteurs bring their visions to the masses, this doesn't even stand out. In a cottage industry easily noted for hand-held cameras and quickly edited on PCs flicks, this film comes across as something a fairly talented group of high schoolers could pull off. While the technical details are quite good, above par editing and some creative camera angles are highlights, the writing is poorly done. It is over-dramatic and poorly constructed. The cast (apparently first year acting students) for the most part overplay their cheesy lines. It is as if somebody decided to cast a bunch of William Shatners together, and had them try to perform a pseudo-religious liturgy. Most of all, in an age of digital video, the film wreaks of hand-held home video cameras, good quality ones, but camcorders none the less. One wouldn't entirely waste their time watching this, but it's far easier to move on to some of the other, less cliché driven efforts to come from the independent sector.

Hmm, where to begin... I'll start with the good, it had a good storyline and some of the shots were nice. That's about it.

On to the bad... ugh, this was a tough pill to swallow. Let's see, the acting was by far the worse I've seen in any film to date. Nine times out of ten the dialog comes off as if it's being read straight from the script without any tonality or acting whatsoever. None of the people in the movie could act, period. It was terrible, but I forced myself to watch it to the end. Special effects... there really weren't any short of cheap colored contacts and a little fake blood. It was kind of funny watching the "angels" sit there unblinking with their green contacts. Haha! I got a good laugh at the main angel and his attempt at seriousness.

The story was good, but there were a ton of preaching undertones to it. I could almost imagine watching this film with my church youth group way back when.

All in all, decent storyline hampered by people that hadn't the first clue about acting and zero SFX. Would I recommend it? Probably not, there are too many other good films to see instead of wasting your time with bad films. The caliber of this film was in line with what you see with fan-made films; i.e., interesting story but terrible acting.

Before I really get in to my review, the thing to remember about this film is that it is full of potential. That said, with a $60,000 budget, what the heck happened? With clichés, bad acting (except for the actor playing Satan who is seriously misplaced among the rest of the actors) and cheesy demonic voices, this movie made me wince. In fact, after about 10 minutes in to it, I contemplated killing myself to get out of watching it. The irritating thing is that it had potential. But with excessive edits, bad writing and drab cinematography, I began to think that perhaps the budget would have been best spent on something else. Like, perhaps a better writer or a cinematographer. But who knows, maybe the director can evolve from this because it looks like he has potential.

Don't watch it unless you have patience or very bad taste.

storyline is interesting; all major characters are well played; should there be a major star in the movie, people would love it. then, it could not be a low budget movie. See the DVD if in doubt.I find no problem with quality, camera-work. Music is original score and is in sync with the action. One has to pay attention to realize the deep context behind the lines. There are not any boring moments; you find fluidity from the first scenes to the last. Just imagine, that this film is the first full length feature movie of a very young director. I can hardly wait to see his second and third and so on. All he has to do is get financial backing, a star or two, and a famous director will be born.