The Culling

I watched this solely because of Sumpter as I want to see him in more roles as I feel his only memorable one is still Peter Pan. I feel that him and Elizabeth were the only decent actors but the movie falls flat. The story was cliché and not engaging. There were virtually no scary parts at all and the gore was minimal. I was hoping for some good creepy atmosphere or if that was absent, at least some excessive gore but sadly the movie lacked both those elements. There was no character development and the writers clearly hated all their characters. I also do not mind when the story is not explained fully such as Night of the Living Dead; it leaves a certain amount of mystery to the movie. This movie, although it did not explain everything, was completely uninteresting to the point that I did not want to know and not knowing made the film even worse. Stay away.

Let me start by saying I understand the collaborative nature of the film-making process. When a movie is particularly well made, the accolades go mostly to the actors and directors, while the scores of set and costume designers, lighting technicians, and sound editors go largely unrecognized. When a movie is well made, fans quote it endlessly, it rakes in cash at the box office, and people remember it for years or even decades. When a movie is well made, it introduces memorable characters the audience can identify with because they see a part of their own personality being played out on the screen.

The Culling is not a well made movie.

There is nothing relatable or even recognizable as natural human behavior present in any of the characters. The acting is stiff and wooden across the board. The dialogue sounds as if it were written by a 12-year-old Juggalo. The only thing more prevalent in the script than plot holes, loose ends, and red herrings is the question mark at the end of every other sentence.

I have sat through some terrible films. I have seen Mark Wahlberg pant his confused way through "The Happening." I have seen three-foot-tall trolls fart on each other for interminable spans of time in "The Garbage Pail Kids Movie." I have seen a topless woman in a gorilla mask wordlessly rob a man at gunpoint, stealing only a horribly disfigured fetus floating in a jar in 1997's "Hideous!" The Culling is the worst movie I have ever seen. Avoid it at all costs.

I'm going to try and avoid repeating what most other reviewers have said since I agree with the majority of the negative comments. That being said, this movie should NOT have sucked as badly as it did. The production values were decent. The cinematography was decent. The general dialog between the five main characters was reasonable and believable. The actresses were attractive, well-spoken and not terrible actors. The male actors were mostly not terrible.

So why did this thing suck so badly? The editing was problematic as was obvious by the shortened film length. I suspect a fair amount was cut as what did appear was choppy and not very cohesive. However, while I think the directing was weak the worst thing about the movie was the script. It's unusual to find even a bad B-movie with as unbelievable and contrived story line as what ran through this dog. Even stoned/intoxicated people don't do as many stupid things as these nitwits did.

In fact, I have to admit to being rather shocked that within the first 10 minutes or so the main actors were doing things that a 10 year old wouldn't do in the same circumstances. Despite being grossly disappointed I soldiered on hoping that each unbelievable screw-up would be the last. Now I'm embarrassed to admit that I finished it.

Nonetheless, this could have been a decent, scary flick if it even had the slightest lick of a story. But it didn't. There is no story here and nothing to see except a couple of pretty young actresses scarring their film resume by having their name on this garbage. Don't waste your time folks. You will be left feeling like an idiot because you watched the entire thing. This dog won't hunt...EVER!

UPDATE: 14/02/17 Update: I HATE SHILLS!!! Since I wrote this review several more, ahem, "Sparkling" reviews have appeared. This film is still VERY BAD!!! Please don't say no one warned you!!! Good Luck!

I must say I didn't like this film. Allow me to summarise the ludicrous plot for you.

Some kids find a lost girl at a roadside diner and decide to drive her home. Once there the parents of the lost child come home and invite the kids to stay. Everyone gets drunk and high. The Mom of the little girl cuts her leg with an axe then the parents of the year drive off to the hospital leaving their child in the care of a bunch of drunk young strangers. Then a load of stuff happens that is very tiresome, nonsensical and boring.

The acting is good by the two main leads it's just that the story is never really engaging. Also it's one of those movies where the plot is fairly vague with reasons for what's happening and I didn't really care enough about it afterwards to try and reason anything out. There was a pretty weak twist in the end that added nothing to the enjoyment factor. The effects aren't great either a bit of blood some poor CG overall a bit lazy.

Certainly not one I'd recommend.

I know the whole process of making a movie isn't the easiest task in the world, but this movie fails so horribly you are angry that your time is gone. My wife and I had to watch another movie after this to get the bad taste out of our mouth and it still didn't help much. The acting was horrible, i was constantly taken out of the situation by all actors, I'm no Oscar winning actor but I'm POSITIVE i could have sold what was happening better than this group. The story didn't make sense, constantly beating around the bush and never goes anywhere. It feels like they are buying time the whole movie and constantly shooting at weird angles so you don't notice that they are shooting all in the same area. The entity was vague, not sure how the girl ties into anything and they acted like she was one of the main parts of the entity and the special effects were horrendous and not making sense. Avoid this movie like the plague