Black Noise

I'm struggling to find a positive in this debacle. Thankfully it was short and with a cast of maybe a dozen at most, you could memorise the acting credits as some form of twisted party trick.

This was shockingly bad. The acting was marginally better than the plot, which started out fairly promising, but soon descended into farce that left so many questions unanswered.

It's not even one of those films that are so bad that they are bizarrely good or funny in some way. There is no character development, which helps when you get to the point of no return in the film. You know that bit when you've committed to it, and that something niggles inside you to keep the faith, to find out what happens even though you don't care - a sadistic curiosity I guess. So as the story progresses, you don't feel empathetic towards any of them, you don't care if they live, die, walk the dog or win the lottery. You just want it to end. Yes it does end, just not quickly enough.

Endless Scenes of Mercs Pointing Rifles Here and There.

The Minimal Amount of Information about just What the Hell is Going On. What is the Mission?... Where are They Going?.

The Movie Gets More Confusing, Ambiguous, and Frustrating as it Unfolds. Things Happen, the Squad Looks and Acts Perplexed. Very Little Discussion about What is Happening or Why it is Happening.

They just Pick Up Their Rifles and Point Here and There Again and Again. Things Similar Happen and They Pick Up and Point Again.

TheY Come Across Someone who Shouts at Them and Pulls a Gun. They Kill the Man and Start Pointing Their Weapons some More.

Weird Sounds, Bleeding from the Ears, a Squad Member Commits Suicide...They Move Along Pointing Their Guns at Nothing that Ever Manifests.

In Fact, Facts Never Manifest about WTF?...the Ending is One of the Most Unsatisfactory Endings in the History of Unsatisfactory Endings.

Nothing is Resolved...Nothing is Explained...The Whole Movie Ends Up Being a Whole Waste of Time.

One Wonders, who was in Charge and just What was the Purpose of Making the Picture.

The Only Real Explanation is that this was a Tax Right-Off for Somebody.

Because the Professionals who Made this Unbelievably Bad Movie Could Not Have Made a Worse Movie if They Tried.

Again, the Ending was LOL Bad and if it Was Not Made that Way on Purpose, as a Joke... Everyone Involved Should be Ashamed. This is just Abysmal Movie-Making.

It Really Doesn't Get Any Worse...At Least Not Without Trying.

I will try to be spoiler free, but the TL;DR opinion is it's terrible. Lots of great ideas on an individual basis, but all mashed together into an incomprehensible mess.

The trailer looked downright interesting. A mercenary team hired to pull an extraction from an island reserved for the rich and shameless.

So far, so good, a bit of a mystery backstory why a late addition to the team shows up, but no worries, adds to the intrigue.

Once they get to the island, everything starts falling apart. They are assaulted by some kind of white noise generator that causes them to bleed out of their ears and behave erratically.

There is hints in the film this might be the work of a hostile gov't or possibly ETs. All kinds of hooks and ideas. Again, so far, so good. Acting is acceptable, lighting is good to "interesting" (a fair overuse of gel filters and saturation cranked up to 11...but it's possible it was on purpose to simulate mental breakdown) but the CGI where used (sparingly, thankfully) was truly wretched.

Unfortunately the build-up of the mystery is thrown away in a rush to reach the end where the director and/or writer ran out of ideas and money in a truly dreadful and nonsensical way.

Quite the shame really, a lot of the ideas, taken separately held promise, but somewhere along the line (about 40 minutes into the film) the whole thing fell totally apart.

Skip it, it's dreadful. 3/10 at best.

So, What was the weapon/monster? Don't know.

Why was Alex Pettyfers character late to the initial meeting and what was he recovering from? Don't know. (Gets explained in the last 5 minutes)

Why wasn't Alex pettyfers character affected by the noise? Don't know.

Why could he see the monsters/people/enemy? Don't know

Why were two female soldiers in an elite army unit crying a lot? Don't know.

Made with a micro budget for the weak of mind by extremely untalented people. Why would the actors say yes to this nonsense? Don't know.

No idea why this was green lit, but I will make a note of everyone involved and make sure never to watch anything made by them again.

Some sort of five person special forces-like unit is dispatched by a seemingly random voice on the phone to an exclusive off-the-grid luxury island to rescue some seemingly random client. We learn nothing about the voice on the phone, the client, or what these five people are doing together. The team arrives to find a deserted island and immediately is subjected to some kind of mind altering sonic blast. From that point on they hallucinate or vividly recall bad dreams.

There are enough positives here that the movie deserves more than one star reviews. The women are attractive, the cast can act to a reasonable B-movie standard, there is little bad CGI, and the director doesn't waste our time trying to make something of a plot that becomes obvious to anyone who has seen the movie Predator. There is an escape from the island subplot that is an appealing one though is never fully developed.

The primary negatives here are the derivative plot and lack of character development. Aside from their physical characteristics I could not tell you one thing about any of the five leads: not their names, skill sets, likes, dislikes, nothing. The only thing we learn about them is they are unprofessional: there is a lot of yelling and crying with virtually no actual communication taking place. The majority of the dialog is exposition about what we are looking at: "we need to get off the island", "I heard a sound", and so on.

The other big negative is the plot is revealed in the first minute on the island when we see the Predator-like display with the alien glyphs. From then on you know what is going to happen, just not how. Without any spoilers suffice it to say the ending will not blow you away.

Five stars for the positives. It is by no means a great movie but it is watchable and even enjoyable at times. I did watch it to the end so there is entertainment value here. Five stars.