Tueur programmé

Lame copycat of the Total Recall, Demolition man and the Clockwork Orange which substitutes screaming and running/driving for acting and plot. Absolutely dreadful movie which goes nowhere, your time is better spend watching the movies this one ripped off, or just doing anything else but. Avoid.

This movie is much better than the avg 4 star given to it. Everything could've been done better, but it still keeps you wondering what is going on throughout the movie, and it ain't stupid or boring. Certainly worth watching if you like "dark" sci-fi. If you're only looking for mindless action - look elsewhere.

Part of me was intrigued before watching 'The Shadow Effect'. It sounded interesting with a great concept, but it did look like a not very well made, ridiculous and by the numbers film with not particularly good actors so there was a little apprehension. Saw 'The Shadow Effect' anyway out of curiosity, being intrigued by the idea and having been a lot of low-budget films recently (most not very good to put it lightly).

''The Shadow Effect' managed to be worse than expected, even with mixed expectations. It started off pretty well, giving off the sense that maybe the film won't be bad and be better than it seemed. This didn't stay for long though and it is something of a shame. After the opening, the film went down south catastrophically very quickly and never recovered or improved. Actually got pretty much worse as it progressed.

On a visual level, 'The Shadow Effect' looked shoddy. Drab and simplistic, with haphazard editing, far from slick photography and very artificial-looking visuals on the whole.

The sound/soundtrack are intrusive and obvious with no variation and the direction has no sense of atmosphere or pacing, nothing to be thrilled by and nothing much engaging.

Script is awkward-sounding and ponderous, with lines that do make one cringe. A lot of it is gibberish and juvenile, with a stilted improvisatory feel that shouldn't have made it past draft stages.

On top of that, the story goes through the motions with no tension, suspense or thrills, a lot of intelligence-insulting ridiculousness, implausibility and pacing so dull that it makes a reasonably short length much longer. It is very derivative and parts also felt incomplete. The action sequences are more preposterous and by the numbers than they are thrilling or fun, a big problem for a film so heavy on this aspect. The terrible way they look also hinder them.

Characters are basically every stereotype in the book it seems and are one-dimensional caricatures with no likeability or development and with the inability to behave logically. The acting is very poor all round, particularly from Cam Gigandet, again showing no acting range of any kind. He and anaemic Jonathan Rhys-Meyers have zero chemistry together and their dialogues have no naturalness or believability whatsoever.

In summary, bad film in almost every way. 2/10 Bethany Cox

This film obviously has a limited budget, but it's biggest handicap is limited imagination and innovation.

These actors are given nothing to work with but scraps from other action films. The quiet stretches are the strongest parts of the film, and they're not strong.

The real weakness is when action scenes are shot and it's obvious only one take was in the budget.

The scene between Rhys-Meyers and Gigandet at the conference table sounds like bad adult film dialogue. I'm guessing this entire film was shot with one take per scene.

Even though I enjoyed the film I was left thinking that the director wasn't sure what to do with the action scenes. Cam who is a black belt in real life and has shown his thing on movies that he has done previously gets barley any unarmed combat time in this movie and I think it was a big misopportunity by the director. There are quite a few action scenes in the movie, cars, gun play, Tec and these are done pretty good, but you feel as if something is missing. Rhys Meyers was wasted throughout the movie. If you liked films like time bomb then you will like this film. This film was a combination of The Manchurian Candidate and Time bomb, with the latter's budget. Overall not bad but when you watch it, you will see that it was a big misoppourtunity.