Shadow

This was... most certainly indi to say the least haha it was a little all over the place but still had some positives.

Conceptually I found this decently interesting and in a big way was saved from being unredeemable by the twist in the end. Nothing all too interesting happened until about half way through and I think a lot of the beginning filler could have been cut. In all honesty, keeping it as close to its original form, I think it could have been most successful as a 30 minute short.

They had some really neat filming locations and set dressing so props for that. Also main guy and girl did a decent job, the two bad guys... not so much. And the bad bad guy, while he didn't say anything he was super creepy. Honestly, could have done with more of him all around.

You have to have a true appreciation for indi for this one. Also I think the concept could inspire something really interesting to work with. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't recommend.

If you liked Wolf Creek, then this funny little movie (and it is short for a movie) will probably please. It manages to remain serious enough throughout to genuinely scare, although at the beginning, to my mind, there is a slight caricature issue. I may be wrong about that, as this is an American movie made by Italians, so I'm not sure what was the intended audience. There is some beautiful forest to be ridden through, though the cameras used could have had better colour, and there was no artistic cinematography which would have been nice, although the shots of the deer were OK. Is it scary though? The first half is action, light on the dread, the second half is dripping with dread, and light on the action. It is frightening, absolutely, but I feel, in my humble opinion, that there was much more scope to develop more creepiness and tension, and I certainly wouldn't have minded the movie going a bit longer so as to enjoy that. It's like a painting that's only 80% and needs some art direction in any case. Shadow has great ideas that are slightly undernourished. Similarly the soundtrack was really original and modern, until the final frantic stages leading to the credits, when it devolved into something off-kilter and slightly distracting. Again, an unfinished painting. The flashbacks needed work, I thought, and to be more convincing. OK, I'm being really picky. Basically, Shadow is a good horror movie with plenty of skin to crawl and seat to edge onto, with excellent acting, good looking leads, and a profoundly devilish evil that's worthy of a minor award. Yea!

I certainly don't intend to say that "Shadow" is a bad film, and I don't even want to discourage anyone from watching it; the only thing that is simply undeniable is that it contributes almost nothing to the horror genre. The story, written by director Frederico Zampaglione , shamelessly cashes in on the biggest and most profitable horror trends of the new millennium, namely vicious torture porn situations (eerie devices in dark and sinister cellars) and silent & nameless creeps that mercilessly ambush ignorant tourists to feast their perverted torture fetishes upon. During "Shadow", I spotted elements and ideas that were previously used in films such as "Saw", "Hostel", "Frontière(s)", "Blood Trails", "Timber Falls" and possibly a few other titles I already forgot about. Relieved that he's finally back from serving in the Iraq war, avid bike rider David goes on an adventurous trip that was recommended to him by a friend. The area, known as "The Shadow", is breath-taking and David even meets the girl of his dream. She's a French beauty called Angelique and she's also obsessed with bike riding; what are the odds on that? Their freshly found happiness rudely gets interrupted when they run into a couple of redneck hunters and are forced to abandon their bikes to hide into the thick woods. Little does David know that this only the beginning of the nightmare, as the Shadow also homes a cruel and psychopathic creep who likes to torture people. The thing that surprised (or is it annoyed?) me the most is the severe lack of sick and nasty violence depicted on screen. All the shocking stuff, as well as most of the killings, occurs off-screen, which is quite unusual for a torture porn flick. The movie does manage to be reasonably suspenseful, especially because David and Angelique are nice and amiable persons, whereas the hunters are loathsome bastards, so during the cat-and- mouse games you automatically cheer for the biker couple. Experienced horror fans can also entertain themselves by spotting all the clichés, for example the soldier flashbacks or the "decorations" inside the maniac's lair. The whole ending is sort of like a mixed bag. I certainly admire Zampaglione's courage and ambition to try something completely different, but the result is principally unsatisfying and leaves quite a lot of questions unanswered. At least you cannot claim that the climax is obvious or even remotely predictable, so that's already an accomplishment on itself. Still, considering we're already in familiar terrain, I personally would have preferred more gore and bloodshed rather than a surreal twist- ending.

I got to say that I'm not big fan of Italian horror movies, but seeing trailer for this movie, got me interested.

Great beginning of the movie, intense (usually love outdoor horror movies) and fun. But, when started "bloody part" of film, I was disappointed. As I love to see blood, cutting, torturing and things like that on horror, I was not so satisfied with "killing scenes", 'cause they were not showed (camera would go up in the air or would be filming from distance). I was expecting a little bit more gory scenes in movie. Plot was good, main actor was good, not great, but at least good looking (watched with my friends, so we liked to see him on screen :)), the killer was creepy and convincing and for the first director's horror movie it was really good.

Watchable movie, definitely didn't waste my time, but could have been a lot better.

I found this movie surprisingly amazing! It was a total fluke that we watched this as we settled in to watch a movie way too late and wanted to pick one quickly. To our luck we ended up picking this one based on the cover (Netflix).

Two people alone in the woods anger two crazy hillbillies. Sounds like your typical slasher film right? Half way through the movie they add a little bit of a twist and add some ghosts stalking everyone in the woods. Sounds like a ghost movie now? Well now add in some crazy looking guy that could be the long lost Uncle of the monsters from the movie "The Descent" who is obsessed with the holocaust and Dr. Mengele's human experiments. What do you have now? With all mentioned above it may sound confusing but it isn't when at the end the Directors message packs a hard punch with an incredible twist.

I love when I watched a movie expecting nothing too special and end up watching a great flick like this one. I was on the edge of my seat the entire time in this film, wonderfully made horror film, the type of perfect horror movie that sucks you in.

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