The Answer

It should have been a lifetime Chanel origanal movie.

Do you like overacting? This has got it. Or, hotwiring a late model Mercedes w/o a key - just strip a couple of wires and spark them together until the car ignition starts... Weird huh? Get ready for fun with a share of 'Dance-Fighting'.

Had no real hope that this low budget, first time directed, movie would be anything good but I was pleasantly surprised - mostly...

The romantic side to this was not just your standard main actor love interest, it was a good blend of action\romance and a little Sci-Fi. No real major special effects here but it didn't need them for the story it was telling and it told it pretty well - flowed well and well acted by the main two actors. Some of the fight scenes were very poor though, I could see what the director wanted to achieve by doing it that way but really didn't work.

Not really recommended if you want either a proper romance or in depth Sci-Fi, no really gripping suspense or riveting action here - but worth a watch if you just want something light where you don't need to concentrate too much!

Iqbal Ahmed is a very inexperienced filmmaker. His credits are pretty sparse and "The Answer" is only the first full-length film he's directed. He also wrote and produced the film…something not uncommon with up and coming indie filmmakers. So, because of the very low budget, I am willing to cut his film a bit of slack. So, while the production values and story left a bit to be desired, there is a lot of promise and I would sure like to see more of his films in the future. The film begins with a creepy prologue. Women are being held captive as breeders by folks who dress a lot like members of the band Daft Punk! And, after they give birth, the women are viciously killed! So, it's obvious from the onset that these folks are kindness impaired! The story now jumps ahead many years. An unimpressive guy named Bridd (Austin Hébert) is working in the mail room of some stock trading company. He also looks a lot like a slightly more macho version of Sheldon from "Big Bang Theory". Who would suspect that this guy has hidden abilities that make him a bit of an action hero?! But, after going out on a date with Charlotte (Alexis Carra), they find themselves in the middle of a murder scene…and the Daft Punk wannabes are looking to kill or capture Bridd and blood and mayhem abound. Can he and Charlotte manage to elude these weirdos as well as determine who they are and what this is all about by the end of the film?

There are a lot of neat story elements and the why of all this is pretty interesting…even though Bridd almost seems to magically figure it all out at times. The notion of aliens and a hybrid species as well as why they need these hybrids is intriguing. But, unfortunately, much of the film seems rushed and not quite worked out properly— especially the relationship between Charlotte and Bridd. It seems as if parts of the story are missing…and so it all moves too quickly to be realistic. Also, the soundtrack is intrusive and repetitive. Fortunately, there are enough good parts that make me want to see more from the filmmaker and his cast. Overall, a miss…but a near-miss that is still worth seeing.

Saw this at the IMAGINE film festival 2015 in Amsterdam. A bit of romance, a bit of humor, a bit of tension, a bit of SciFi, and a bit of mystery, all of that mixed together in this surprising movie. The story line leaves us continuously guessing what is going on, and what could reasonably follow after that. In the final Q&A the director declared this to be a "hybrid" movie, and that is precisely what we got. We see several people and follow them while several mysterious things happen. It starts a bit colorless within an office and a date between two very different colleagues, in fact an odd couple no one would have expected them to go out together. According to the director, they are opposites and that was intentional. Narratively speaking they are the actual binding elements, to guide us through various genres like Romance, SciFi, Thriller and any combination of that.

No chance to outguess in which direction the story is going to develop. Whatever you anticipated, it is totally different from what really went on. And, more importantly, it was much better than I had thought. Strange things start happening, and it is good to consider that the overall theme. It is not exactly an "Action" film as IMDb misleadingly tells us, due to the mere fact that aforementioned odd couple cannot be considered super heroes by any definition.

Some additional notes from the final Q&A with the director: They used a lot of places in his home town in Virginia, which he could use for free, knowing his budget was small. The masked men in the library were dressed as they were on purpose, as this was the only way not to give immediately away that some SciFi was involved. These masked men behaved like any military force, secret police or drug gang. That their assignment was of a totally different nature, was to become clear much later, being one of the surprising twists in the proceedings.

All in all, the low budget does not glare us in the face at all. It was surprising and very entertaining, yet I don't think it will provide for the same mix of sensations when viewed a second time. Whatever happens to the main protagonists is very unusual, even a bit far fetched, and they survive only through sheer luck. Nevertheless, the genre mix was a nice find and it kept our attention throughout the running time.