La vigilante

This movie fails in every way possible. The "fire watch tower" is some old cabin with a few windows that isn't tall enough to see over the trees. The depiction of how lookouts and a National Forest operates makes me think that the writer has not finished elementary school yet or is someone that has lived and worked in the nature vacuum of a large city in the eastern U.S. The producers could not even arrange to use a real lookout tower, which would have helped. But in the end nothing could have helped this movie. The individual scenes are poorly connected and when added together in the end, fail to tell any type of cohesive story. If this site had a negative rating option I would use it for this movie.

When my wife and I are in a theater viewing movie previews and see one for a movie that looks like a complete waste of time we turn to each other and say "lets wait until this movie comes out on video and not rent it." My recommendation for this movie is "lets see when this movie is aired and not watch it."

At the age of nine, Cassie Malloy was kidnapped and locked in a basement for two days. Nineteen years later, the traumatized Cassie (Clea Duvall) studies psychology at the Braxton University and needs to work on her thesis. Cassie decides to accept a four-week job working alone in an isolated fire watch tower in the forest to vanquish her demons from the past. Cassie leaves her best friend Andrea (Elizabeth Whitmere) and travels to the spot, where she meets the forest guard Rhett (James A. Woods) that brings Cassie to the tower. Cassie feels the effect of the isolation and experiences weird things but she is comforted by Polly, the lookout of the east tower. When Rhett visits Cassie, she learns that Polly died five years ago in a fire. Cassie decides to quit her job, but Rhett recalls her that she signed a contract and he needs at least two days to find a replacement. Cassie agrees to stay while Andrea receives a strange phone call for Cassie.

"The Watch" is a tense and claustrophobic thriller, but with a disappointing conclusion. The writer Ben Ripley and the director Jim Donovan lost the opportunity of making a great supernatural story; with minor modifications, giving an ambiguous or a horror ending, this film would be excellent. Nevertheless, Clea Duvall gives a great performance in the role of a woman traumatized in her childhood that wants to defeat her demons. The talented Elizabeth Whitmere is not only a beautiful and sexy actress, but has a wonderful voice. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "Passado de Horror" ("Past of Horror")

Look, I wasted most of 90 minutes on this. The production quality is very good and for most of the movie there's intrigue. It's about a female graduate student choosing to spend 4 weeks in a remote fire-watch cabin to complete her masters thesis without excess distraction. But it turns out she gets a lot of bizarre, possible supernatural distractions. The ultimate reveal though is based on a plot that is impossible. I can't say how or why, that would create a spoiler. Especially for anybody who's studied psychology or sociology with a serious interest would see the glaringly stupid and impossible events. The core element of the plot revolves around graduate level academic study in the social sciences. However the writers show their immense lack of basic knowledge. It was a real disappointment. This is a perfect example of what English teachers mean when they "write about what you know." I am amazed that this found a producer. There's more intrigue in that phenomena than the movie itself.

I have just wasted over an hour watching this totally predictable, 'with a hope that it would get better' excuse of a film. Made for TV or not, I watched it based on the last persons review on this site (more than not, I can pretty much get the gist of a film from the reviews on this site) and I'm not even going to waste any more time to tell you how disappointed I am.

So, this is your WARNING - unless you really want a mind numbing time, don't bother. It's not worth your while, no really... I mean it. I can't even pull out any 'best bits', oh, if you like looking at beautiful colourful trees then this films for you - because there's really nothing more to it than that! And that was me being generous.

A good honest TV Horror movie. Clea DuVall plays Cassie, a girl who at the age of 7 was traumatised by her kidnapping and imprisonment in a dingy basement. 20 years later at grad school, Cassie is struggling to finish her thesis on time, so takes up a job as as fire-watch warden out in the forest so as to earn some money while having the peace and calm to finish her project. But soon the isolation brings back traumas she though had long since past, more so when it appears that someone or some thing is definitely out to get her.

It's a pretty shaky premise, the whole face your fear factor in the name of setting up a horror story, asking of us a giant leap of faith to believe Cassie really would go live out in the woods on her own. While the narrative plays its hand way too early, something which doesn't help the sub-standard resolution. However, there's some good scares and originality thrown in for good measure, while DuVall is a good value actress when it comes to portraying the various stages of fight and flight. 6.5/10