Hillwalkers

I gave this film a go as it had a little of the Blair Witch Project atmosphere about it and the intro at the start with the woman in red was quite well done. The rest is embarassing. Not talking about the acting which wasn't too bad although the characters of this film were not developed and devoid of personality. How can you criticise a film that cost 30,000 to make? I don't know but it seems 'off'. Apart from the intro the rest does not seem to have been developed at all. Cringeworthy stuff and hard to believe. In Ireland if you travel more than 2 steps forward unless you are in a national park you are going to hear or see a car. This can't have been a national park because of all the private property signs. So its just impossible to believe they are isolated in such a way. All without mobile phone coverage and no thought given as to what to do in the event of an accident even though they are dressed up in stylish hiking clothes they did not think about what to do in an emergency. Quite a dumb bunch of hikers. So why did they send off one person on their own from a group of 6 to get help and not two? I guess so that she can be terrifed later on. When you make characters dumb in order to force through a plot it ends up with characters that you want to see killed straight away to punish them for their stupidity. Reminds me of the League of Gentlemen on steroids and seems insulting to anyone who is not from Dublin. The whole thing looks like a a poor Rockshore beer commercial and lacks credibility and certainly lacks movement or pace. Actually painful waiting for each scene to end and move on to the next one.

This is now, officially, my personal pet peeve about most movies: they have a lot going for them in a very narrow, familiar genre fashion, but then waste it by not making any effort to be original, or intelligent when the plot or action finally kicks in. As if it doesn't matter what they do after a certain point, as if anyone watching the film won't care if it's stops making sense or becomes so downright stereotypical and bland and DUMB that it's kind of an insult. This film starts fairly good (for such a well worn genre convention: city folks go into country and find danger), nothing exceptional by any stretch but the actors do alright with rather dull characters, the cinematography is amazing and the countryside is awesome. Pretty by the book (one character is "strong" and overcoming cancer so you might guess who's gonna survive) but I was interested. They even make a point of what amazing negotiators these folks are so I was expecting that might come into play when they run afoul of the local loonies. But no. It actually just gets forgotten and how they behave from their first meeting on is basically guaranteed to allow the stupid, predictable plot to unfold after that. Very quickly the best thing about the film becomes the interplay between the locals which is amusing in a believable fashion and, thank god, not played broadly for laughs! Their performances are also the best, and if only the script didn't let them down when it came to what happens this film might have been a real winner. They had everything they needed to make a successful genre entry except the ability (or willingness) to fix a mediocre script that falls apart in the last half. It's one thing to suggest the city folks are ill equipped to deal with survival at this level (see Deliverance) but this movie just has the characters become idiots. If you don't consider a directors job to include caring about the script, or character actions, you could say it's still handled well enough but all the good points the film earned in the beginning are wasted.

A good film to watch. I would ignore the negative reviews but then everyone has different tastes. Yes, things go wrong and it's great to see a movie where you would do things differently if you were one of the characters.

It is a good watch, it is not going to be your favourite movie ever but it's a GOOD watch. I like it the style and characters. Some dark humour too and it really is like a film where you will go "oh no, they shouldn't have done that". Also for those go walking and hiking, it's great to remind of you what NOT to do. Overall, it really is a good film and worth a watch for sure.

My four points are for the beautiful actresses. Otherwise, the story is a silly one. Three strong women and two weak men are on a trek through the wilderness and one of the men somehow gets a large splinter stuck in his leg. Uh oh; they ignore a no trespassing sign and the predictable bad men arrive and make life difficult for the group. The final ten minutes are ridiculous. Avoid Hillwalkers.

Where you can see the small budget.

The actors and the story are not convincing.

All in all, a very weak film.

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