Dead Kids

Felt catfished by the trailer that promised an edgy, dark comedy and exciting heist movie with social commentary. The editing was fast paced and dialogue chosen was controversial.

The film had barely any of that. It fell flat and became this cliche melodramatic sob fest. You cannot feel sympathy for any of the characters because their choices are so illogical and just dumb. The characters are flat and stereotypes that aren't even comedic, it's just annoying. The underdog characters have no charm either.

The direction was bland. A lot of people sitting down and talking scenes for a supposedly exciting heist film. The color grading was interesting at least. It's basically a pretty and drawn out episode of MMK. This movie was a disappointment, especially with the screenplay and it's frustrating because the trailer showed what it could have been if it lived up to it's potential.

While the Tagalog cinema is flooded with cheesy romantic comedies, it is often nice to have a break away from that genre, so I was excited to get to watch the 2019 movie "Dead Kids" by director and writer Mikhail Red.

However, it was a short lived excitement, because "Dead Kids" turned out to be a tedious movie experience. An experience of which I managed to last 1 hour, then I simply gave up out of sheer and complete boredom. Nothing much of any interest happened through the course of that ordeal of an hour I sat through. And I can honestly say that I have no intention of returning to watch the rest of the movie, as the storyline failed to interest me at all.

I will say, however, to the movie's defense that the acting in the movie was good, and the actors and actresses seemed quite adept at making the characters come to life on the screen. Just a shame that they had nothing to work with in terms of script and storyline.

This was a disappointment for me and I am rating "Dead Kids" a mere three out of ten stars. This is by no means the best that the Tagalog cinema has to offer.

... gone wrong? Well you have to watch to know. Though I would recommend watching the trailer first or at least read about what this is ... about. Not everything is for everyone and those teenage boys can be quite annoying. And when you come to their "plan", you may be even more annoyed.

The movie tries to keep it as real as possible, but gets quite crazy at times. Coincidences and everything included that is. The resolution may make some mad too, but it is what it is ... I've seen worse movies and as bad as the characters are, the movie is decent (acting has some downfalls though)

Good to passable acting. Cinematography is ok. Cringy Dialogue. The main character is supposedly a smart dude but almost everything is dumb. What was even the point of Sue Ramirez's character? When you search for this movie you see her name on the list of actors first but for what? She wasn't really a plot device or a 'Chekov's gun' in a sense. She was just there...

Dead Kids is about a group of boys who plot to kidnap the class bully and ask for ransom from the bully's drug lord father.

I liked this movie up until 2/3rds of the way because the acting by all of the main cast was superb. Being a Filipino, and having gone through High School here, the 4 main boys all put up convincing performances (although a bit exagerrated by the script). The pacing was also good - it wasn't too rushed or too slow. The cinematography and music did a good job of establishing the film's atmosphere.

I just have a problem with the ending, and undeveloped characters. I know that film is about show, don't tell but I think some details about the main character weren't really fleshed out or were too subtle. The decision he made at the end really did not make sense to me. The character of Sue Ramirez was also underdeveloped (I agree with one of the reviews posted here) that her speech before the ending felt forced or out of place and her last scene just puzzled me and I didn't know what it meant.

There was a bit of social commentary also in the film about social class but again, it fell short for me. I know the film makers didn't want to be too preachy but I would've preferred a bit more preachiness instead of grasping at straws as to what it was the makers were trying to stand for.

Nevertheless, I would still recommend that people watch this movie. It would be interesting to see what else the Red Brothers will come up with in their future projects.