Innocence

Innocence: Yet another girl starts at a new school and something spooky is going on. In this case it's an upscale Manhattan prep school, Hamilto, centuries old, exclusive. A girl jumps off a school building almost hitting Beckett, the new girl. There is an odd atmosphere, in the classrooms, the corridors, some Hamilton old girls (including teachers) have a creepy book club. Beckett investigates and finds that another two girls have committed suicide. There is a nest of Vampires in the school! This tale unfolds slowly and while a nice broody, Gothic atmosphere builds up it is overlong. Interesting Vampire action without the overuse of special effects but this might have worked better as an episode of an anthology series. Directed/Co-written by Hilary Brougher. On Netflix. 6/10.

I discovered this on Netflix two days ago, and realised that I had watched only a part of it, so I decided to give it a rewatch and finish the film.

So far I can say that the movie does have potential in several areas - while the plot ideas may not be wholy original in concept, the way the film introduced those ideas could've been developed into something that may have potentially gotten some really good praise. A similar thing can be said for the casting; The actors and actresses I'd say are pretty good for a film like Innocence, and I think that that in itself opens up for more potential. Unfortunately though, the film is pretty flawed and has many aspects of it that hold it back from succession.

The plot progression felt extremely tacky and skittish - Bare in mind, there was some decently average (which average isn't bad, by the way) progression at the first 35 minutes of the movie, but then further on it was like as if the writer and director decided to rely the movie's storyline on being just filler (meaning material that has no value, that adds nothing worthwhile to the story) which unfortunately made the final sequence feel off and awkward. Furthermore, the structuring of the plot + transitioning between scenes and sequences also felt strange and poorly executed - There were a few scenes that were nicely paced and shot, but it was like as if those scenes were in an unnatural clash between the film's faster and weirdly shot moments. And then comes the character development: There were so many opportunities that the film missed out on when it came to character development (especially Pamela and Beckett), which made me so sad because Pamela and Beckett were two interesting characters that I thought the movie would develop on. Overall, the film left many gaps within it that made it feel unfufilling, which is heartbreaking because the film had so much potential that it carelessly left behind :(

This film passed a rainy Sunday afternoon. I have to admit my attention wavered a few times resulting in having to rewind on a couple of occasions. I've seen worse films but the horror was woefully lacking. Some great actors in this who were a bit wasted on the story. If you want to see Kelly Reilly at her best I recommend you ditch this film and watch Eden Lake. Reilly's sometimes breathless over acting is so much more appropriate to the film Eden Lake and she puts in an "Edge of your seat" performance. Innocence? An ok film but distinctly lacking in something.

I think that this was a great display of effort. Great performances by Graham Phillips and Sarah Sutherland! I was also impressed by the work of director Hilary Brougher, one of my personal heroes. I think that though there is room for improvement in the this film I can tell that there was a great attempt made by the crew and especially the director. I can tell that the mistakes in the film were made most likely made during the editing process. I think that the composition is not quite up to par. Even so, I think that with a few changes and a little more experienced cast the experience of watching this movie would have been much improved.

Absolutely terrible, the acting is lazy, it's as if everyone is on valium, they tried to put a few jump scares in to keep you interested, which doesn't really work, and the grand finale wasn't grand, was over before it started.

I wasn't expecting much and that's exactly what I got.