Body at Brighton Rock

I finish bad books & movies,in hopes they get better. This movie didn't have enough dialogue to begin with,then none,just music. All around bad writing,casting and acting. Not RECOMMENDED.

Within the first 30 seconds you'll know that this is going to be amongst the dumbest cheapest productions ever. You get cartoonish graphics worthy of the cheapest Saturday morning cartoons; terrible background music, and our park ranger sneaking into a morning assignment meeting. She is now off (in spiffy new backpack, shoes, attire w/lots of makeup) to post bear warning signs. Down the remote trail she actually dances while earbud listening to music from her iPhone - duh? hello bear, mountain lion. Finds a dead body & hallucinates whether it's alive or not - made no sense. Lots of FF for this one.

If you're going to have a movie with one character off by themselves for the majority of the run-time then there must be a lot of interesting things happening for the character to deal with, or the character must be particularly interesting. And it doesn't hurt if the actor is charismatic. This movie avoids all three of those options as if they were the plague. They make it clear (in fact it's necessary) that the main character is incompetent and stupid and all her actions will be thoughtless at best, and reckless at worst. But she's not interesting or involving or appealing to make time spent with her tolerable. And actually very little happens until the obvious dream sequences (not very inventive or gripping) and all of it is downright boring. It's a wasted hour and a half in the company of an irritating half-wit. If that's your idea of a good time, watch this film.

Despite a Giallo aesthetic that doesn't suit the premise or setting, a one-dimensional and incompetent protagonist who's inexplicably superhuman when the plot requires her to be, abrupt shifts in tone and pacing, ongoing jump scares that are always telegraphed by the score (with only one that garnered any response in the theatre: uproarious laughter), a predictable third act, unresolved plot points that masquerade as red herrings, and a pointless twist ending with no setup, Body and Brighton Rock is actually a very fascinating film: it provides scientific proof of the theory of time dilation. At a mere 87 minutes, it feels like it's four hours long.

I get the sense that the screenplay was little more than a shot list. This is unfortunate, because there's no denying that director Roxanne Benjamin is a competent filmmaker. She attempts to establish her own style by recycling tried-and-true horror tropes, and there's some good ideas here. But technical aptitude is not the same as meaningful storytelling. The film is incredibly thin and would have worked best as a 20min short.

Depicting the first serious incident on the job of a fresh(wo)man Park Ranger.

It's a useful movie particularly for the urbanites, who would go to a National Park once and then say, "I want to become a park ranger, it's so easy and awesome".

All in all a good movie of a person confronted with their fears, in a realistic way, with some comedic moments, a type of a movie which is sorely lacking these days with overwrought overly serious "paranormal" horror or "crazed killer"-dominated genre.

A welcome breath of fresh forest air.