They Talk

This movie is incredibly slow, i don't know what other way to say it. It starts well, acting is great and is very dark and bleak but... I just lost interest along the way.

I want to start with what bothered me the most about this movie. They try to sell really hard that this movie is filmed in America - they make a show of panning down to a Missouri license plate; the local diner (called "Eats") has American flags draped in no less than two or three places throughout the interior; the menus in the diner each feature an American flag imprinted on them; the cabin in the woods has an American flag flying outside.... Yet every single actor/actress in the movie has an foreign accent, despite two of the main characters supposedly raised since they were young in an orphanage in America. The roads don't look anything like roads in America. The hospital looks less like a modern American ER and more like a hospital you might see in the 1930's. The movie was filmed in Italy with Italian actors. Why on Earth would you try so hard to make it look otherwise. I'd have enjoyed it more if they'd played up the Italian angle - but as a second (third?) generation Italian immigrant, I might be slightly biased.

OK, so the movie itself.... This is your basic EVP (electronic voice phenomenon) flick up until about the last thirty minutes or so. Up until then, it's a little slow, but then things get weird. I'm not really sure why what happens happens. It leaves you with more questions than answers.

The acting is ok. It does feel like a low budget film, though, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It just is what it is. It's good for a weekend night, "escape from reality" flick but don't expect anything spectacular.

The person who shot this knew what they were doing but no one else connected with this did. It kind of had a story, if you can say this is about a guy who hears voices, but that's about all there is to it. It's as if totally random scenes are just strung together, even love scenes that just seem to be inserted for no reason. The movie was all over the place, as if they couldn't decide what this was suppose to be. The lead actor tried, but every supporting actor was awful. Worst of all, were the accents. Although they show a car with a Missouri license plate, it would seen most of the cast was foreign and English was not their first language. While the movie is in English, some actors really struggled with their lines, making listening to the bad dialogue even worse. No chemistry between actors, no scares, no suspense, just a mess and a waste of time.

A thriller with its plot-heavy scenes creating a weighty, incomprehensible story. Meanwhile the impressive acting surfaces here and there amidst all the unanswered questions. The documentary film subplot, itself, is abandoned, so too many of the movie's characters disappear, leaving the effective protagonist alone with too many computer scenes, and too many drone shots. There's a gorgeous synthesizer score and the special effects are top-notch--and practical. Only a few obnoxious stutter-cuts interrupt what the director maintains in traditional style and pace. Rocio Morales is superb as the movie's most tragic character. There's a large quantity of atmosphere, and the movie's art direction and locations support this. If only the writers and editors had collaborated more on communicating suspenseful information over just creating beautifully photographed suspense, and some quality gore.

Okay what can you say about a low budget foreign movie, the tries surprisingly hard to pretend that it was filmed in America. Everyone speaks with a European accent, but we have American flags flying everywhere and a Missouri license plate on one of the vehicles. Most of the actors/characters really need to wash their hair and take a bath, it has a dirty, grungy, smoky feel to the entire movie, which really does nothing to enhance the movie, and actually took me out of it a number of times because all I could think of is my God they need to take a shower. The pacing is incredibly slow, nothing unusual for a low budget foreign horror movie. The plot overall is predictable and plodding. Acting is so so, playing bunch of people that you can't understand why they have anything to do with each other, but that's pretty much the norm for modern horror films. It feels low budget, it looks low budget, it is low budget. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, but it just gets old after a while. Since it's basically a free movie on a free service, there's not a lot to complain about. Would I watch it again? No. Do I regret watching it? Not really. It gave me something to listen to while I was folding clothes.