Shangri-La: Near Extinction

I forced myself to sit through the entire movie hoping at some point it would improve...I was wrong, painfully wrong. This movie is not worth the time to sit through. There are plenty of other low budget movies that are far more tolerable than this, chose one of those instead of this abysmal piece of work.

The concept is great! Good piece for newbie actor/tress to cut their teeth on.

This movie really feels like it was meant to be the pilot for some new series. It has this odd intro spiel that's more common for a series, then it ends in a wind-up as if it's getting ready to start episode 2. But of course there aren't any episodes to follow. I'm guessing this was supposed to be a new series and it never got picked up.

As a standalone movie it's not good. The acting is very forced and wooden. The dialog feels flat and scripted instead of flowing. The special effects are cringe worthy.

It's an interesting idea, but needs work.

A recurring theme of my IMDB reviews is the script. I have seen great scripts lift up severely low budget film because it had a solid foundation.

Well I present to you my poster child for a lot of money spent on a movie in DESPERATE need of a script ... and scripting. This was dripping with opportunities. Real good cinematography. Even better effects for a not-so-low budget endeavor. Its possible the acting would be considered even better than that, if they hadn't been burdened with the worst script I have experienced in a long while.

In the barest of hope that the crew is reading this ... The script is the easiest and cheapest thing to improve since it only requires the writers/directors to be involved and spend the time to make something good. This is well before you start paying cast and crew members. This script was HORRIBLE. You couldn't delay starting this movie for a month (or more like 3, as bad as this script was) before starting to shoot? SHAME ON YOU! The cast and crew now suffer for your impatience, as they have to live with the low ratings this movie will receive, or worse, for the high ratings it could have received.

My main reasons for seeing 'Shangri-La: Near Extinction' were an intriguing title and concept, that it was part of my low-budget film quest after being recommended to me by IMDb in my recommended for you section and as someone trying to see as many 2018 films as possible.

The good news about 'Shangri-La: Near Extinction' is that there have been worse films seen by me throughout my life and recently, ones that are even more amateurish, intelligence insulting and ones that blatantly rip off infinitely superior films more cheaply. The bad news is that that doesn't stop 'Shangri-La: Near Extinction' from being very bad.

Am trying to be a fair reviewer trying to see the good in everything viewed, as always. It is very hard to do that here with so many badly executed elements, that look as if little effort was made. The least bad asset is the scenery which did have atmosphere.

Visually, 'Shangri-La: Near Extinction' looks incredibly cheap even for something made on a low budget. It's very drably and sometimes dizzyingly shot, incoherently edited (bacon-slicer-like) with glaring and unforgivably sloppy continuity errors. Even worse are some of the most laughable and pathetic-looking special effects to be seen on celluloid, actually looking they were done as an afterthought and on the small remainder of the money they had left. Nothing menacing or threatening and there are no surprises.

Can remember little about the music, which tended to be intrusive, annoying and out of place. The script is so awkward, cheesy and improvisatory-sounding that it is enough to make the toes curl in how awful it is. The ending is very predictable and pretty contrived.

There is absolutely nothing thrilling, tense, suspenseful, emotionally investable or fun about the story. The predictability may have been forgivable if the film was actually engaging let alone exciting but it fails to be either throughout. 'Shangri-La: Near Extinction' is basically non-stop dullness and intelligence-insulting ridiculousness, with unintentional humour because of the excessive cheese, bouts of mawkish and stilted melodrama and irritating character behaviours that makes one endear to them even less in a film with not one interesting or rootable character. Hated the sister especially.

As for the acting it ranges from borderline-okay to appalling, some try to engage with their material but the worst of the acting is so embarrassing one questions whether they had any acting lessons.

In conclusion, not one of the worst films seen recently or ever but very bad. 2/10 Bethany Cox