The Taking

If you enjoy watching a lot of shots of the sun partially hidden by trees over and over this movie is for you! Lots and lots of the same shot repeating over and over.

There is no dramatic structure at all to this film. The filmmakers (if you can call them that) sprinkle in some actors running through the woods screaming, running into houses screaming, and driving their cars screaming. Yes this movie has a lot of sporadic yelling, dissolves, freeze frames, and I do not have a clue what it is all about.

It's got some really weird sound design, I think the sound editor fell in love with a 'pitch control' plug in.

I usually don't care for films that drive the narrative through dialogue, but the complete lack of narrative structure here is ridiculous. Visually it's a complete mess. The films of Stan Brackhage and Matthew Barney are more comprehensible. It's just a film with a bunch of actors covered in fake blood walking around the woods or bound to a tree, and did I say lots and lots of freeze frames, dissolves and the same shot of the sun hidden partially by trees? They also slapped in a disembodied voice saying 'Carl' over and over for good measure.

In stead of Horror it should have been categorized as just plain Horrible.

We only managed to sit through the first 11 minutes before calling it a day. I think we did pretty well considering.

The cinematography and soundtrack were repetitive and disjointed. It looked like they only had one camera to shoot with and so every scene (within the first 11 minutes) was chopped together with the same imagery and sound effects. It was funny the first 2 or three times, we even joked "I bet they show the sky again" but they kept on doing it! The result wasn't eerie or sinister but it did give my wife and I a headache.

I don't feel its fair to comment on the acting as I only watched 11 minutes of the movie and didn't see any.

As for the reviewers that gave this such an astounding review. Well done! You got me! (for 11 minutes anyway).

For everyone else - AVOID AVOID AVOID!

I have never written a review on IMDb before. This movie was so awful, so pointless and utterly devoid of artist merit that I felt compelled to write one. I'm a huge fan of experimental, avant- garde art-house films, but this is like something that a class of 6th graders put together. In addition to the utter absence of a plot, characters, narrative structure or even a point, the sound design is so awful that it's literally unbearable. Someone needs to explain to the "Director" that loud screeching noises and unintelligible distorted voices are not, in themselves, even remotely scary or interesting. I cannot emphasize enough how bad this movie is. I've seen a lot of bad movies, and usually there is at least SOMETHING to redeem them; this movie misses even that low bar. Avoid at all costs.

You know what's funny? I watched exactly 10 mins and 42 seconds of this movie before I paused it and searched it on IMDb. In this comment section I found that 11 mins was about average for quitting.

Don't get me wrong, I am a fan of movies that do horror differently, and I am very open to artistic development of motion picture. But seriously, this tries way to hard to copy something good and still fails the test. I've been more interested in the beginning of children's movies than this movie, and I can say with full confidence that I have never sat down intending to watch a certain movie and quit like this. In fact, if I start watching a movie, it really bothers me if I don't watch it from the beginning and don't finish it, regardless its really good or really bad. Even to the point of not even going to the theatre if I am more than 5 mins past the start of the movie; I consider myself a cinemaphile. But this is not cinema, it's a crummy redbox rental that just sits on your table for 3 days and that you give the company money to take back.

This "film" is simply dreadful. I won't drag this out. Terrible writing, directing, acting. Terrible scenes, production, makeup. They probably had terrible food on set too. There is not one single thing to like in this "film". I felt raped.

Pay attention to the reviews here. You'll see 2 or 3 blazing good reviews. If you notice they know people involved by their first names and it's obvious that the reviewers either worked on the "film" and/or are trolls.

This is one of the worst to come a long in a while. It's so bad that it can't even be made fun of for a laugh. It's bad enough to make you angry.