Second Coming

First of all, this is a real slick film. Too slick for my D movie cravings. I mean, low micro budget flicks usually should look and feel like crap, and there is a charm to those movies, what makes me love them, the underdogs, the ones without all the fancy Hollywood stuff.

But this film totally surprised me, from frame one, it looks awesome and it should not be like this. I congratulate Jose Cassella for photographing a solid piece of entertainment. Filmmakers take notice, this is how independent films, specially micro budget indie films should look like.

Loved the story, my father suffers from Tinnitus, so the use of that condition in the story line was a masterstroke.

I got this Tuesday from Blockbuster and I did hesitate at first, somehow the cover didn't do it for me. But I took the chance and you all should take a chance on this little gem.

Its not for everyone, as I read here among other comments, but for me this is one of the best Indie "horror" films I've seen...ever. I don't know if I should say "horror", it really isn't a horror film, its more like a drama with a few small touches of gore.

Also, the extras are gold, pure gold. The short film included, its called "Wish", its even better than the film!. and the Tinnitus PSA that is also on the extras is simply amazing, to the point and it contains a message that needs to be spread, people need to know about the damages of Tinnitus.

A surprise, truly a surprise.

If you like to watch plots unfold slowly as the movie progresses, like light bulbs going off revealing answers to perplexing questions as you go, I think you'll really like this movie. It shows the uniqueness of the bond between twins, as one twin gets "messages" or "visions" from the other as to why she's missing, and where she is. With their disturbing past being revealed as the story progresses, things get more and more unsettling. It's not the most "scary" movie I've ever seen, but it's got more intrigue and dark character building than a lot of horror films I've seen. The special effects are quality - it kept my attention all the way. And I think some of the characters were interesting that weren't necessarily the leads. My favorite part is the ending, which I really didn't see coming.

This was a movie about infidelity and revenge. A twin with the "twin" connection senses that something is wrong with her sister. This movie took forever to establish the plot. A plot that has been done many times. The acting was lousy for the most part. Once the plot comes together, the movie ends. Laura and Ashley are twins that live with an abusive father. The father seems to favor Ashley, so Laura gets the blame for everything. There is a promise made that the girls would never be apart, but as they grow up, their lives go in different directions. Ashley gets a job in a diner where she meets Barry, a married man. Of course no good can come of this. The fact that Barry had tinnitus was a poor excuse for a way to track him down. I kept waiting for this movie to get better and for there to be some resolution somewhere, but it never happened.

Second coming failed to capture my attention. The story was over-dramatic, poorly written and the situations were unbelievable. It seemed to have been written by someone who had never been through anything similar, and wrote about what they imagined it would be like. About a quarter of the way into the movie, I realized that the story was not interesting, and my mind started wandering. By the end of the movie, I was having to rewind just so I would be able to see what happened. And when the movie ended, I had not even realized this until about 30 seconds into the credits.

I can, however, say the camera work was well done. It's just unfortunate that the camera had to be focused on such poor acting. If visuals made a movie good, this would have been a great flick.

While not perfect, I was very impressed with the level of craft shown on this film, specially knowing of its low budget ahead of time ( I read it through Fangoria Magazine). And it was real low. But lets not have an opinion based on the budget of the film, it is actually a smart, well presented thriller- drama. The problem I see with little films that look this great is that they often get judged as a larger film, which is unfair. Also, this is not a horror film, it is a small drama. It is a shame distributors are selling it like that. This leads to some critics getting upset at it because it was "not scary" enough. I think this one is a winner and one can see we are not dealing with some amateur director with no ambition ( which by the way, not only directed the thing, shot it and wrote it. I rented it on Netflix, along with another low budget horror film. That other film cost 4 times more and had none of the skills shown here.

I am very impressed. Great story, not perfect, but great. Good performances from most of the cast. Very good photography and overall, a great effort. If this is the starting point for this director, I can only imagine what lies in his future.