Landing Lake

It could have been a good movie with that plot. But NOT!!! Its crap all the way. Stay away i say.

It's not a zombie film, so the movie earns a point there. The practical effects on 35 mm film, plus atmospheric locales and a genuine synthesizer score, raise this to above average, but the grade is paralyzed by the always-fatal imbalance of quality acting versus wretched acting. The bonkers plot, which does has the nerve to play out with little concern for coherence or audience-pleasing, still could have benefited from a 100% strong cast. Yet it's not often you encounter good acting in most horror-thrillers nowadays. At least there's ample gore and squishy killings to delight all the Fangoria geeks.

"Landing Lake" is sunk by underwhelming acting acumen and proceedings so incomprehensible it is impossible to determine what these filmmakers intended. Except evidently to make their audience both baffled and bored.

The story, in theory, is a fun, and chilling way to approach first contact tropes in sci-fi horror. I have seen it done well in movies like "Yellow Brick Road" and "Star Lead". Unfortunately "Landing Lake" never coalesces fully enough to marry the dreamscape psychedelia and core sci-fi aspects. It all plays out like a wilderness mushroom high but weren't all tripping the same.

The fault doesn't fully fall with script or direction. Not that there isn't some issues in both, it just seemed that too many concepts came into play without proper structuring. The acting is decent, some characters really came out strong. A couple were just so---ugh! They just made it impossible to fully succumb to the movie's experimental theatre vibe enough to wanna like this madness.

Now on a positive note, the cinematography is great. And on its own, the whole surrealism, arthouse style was- at times impressive. Sadly the foundation of the story and continuity just didn't come together to allow the audience to make sense of the going-ons. Another cool aspect is the creative, throwback score.

Simply speaking, I could not wach more than 20 minutes. Believe me the script was done overnight. Characters are horrible.