volcaniccustard

I was very impressed with the first half - a very maturely put together premise. But half way through, it either became jeopardised by too many ideas, or not enough focus. Either way, it was messy and unclear how to reveal what was all too obvious to the average viewer - and all the finesse of the first half was left ashen in its rapidly dwindling invention. So by the final act, it was floated by the weight of so little, it could have not existed at all, and probably done the film a favour. What a shame.

This movie tries to be a mash-up of several genres that all have strong followings - part family drama, part vigilante/crime, part horror. With all 3 genres sadly tired and worn of late, in my humble opinion, this was at least trying to change the groove. So I have to congratulate the audacity in the undertaking of what is a low budget production. The acting is incredibly good for a movie of this scale, and the drama element is well written in developing a credible story around the 3 main characters. However, it was always going to be a struggle to weave the horror and vigilante violence seamlessly and believably, and here it did suffer from a lack of tighter, careful direction. Like some other reviewers, there was a nagging "could have been better" when the credits rolled. But that also respects the challenge that the makers had before them and the ingenuity of the story - where a significant amount was a success. 6/10

Substandard acting and desperately lazy/weak dialogue dampened what could have been a tremendous entry in the overburdened Sci-Fi/action genre. This could have been in part down to budget, but poor scriptwriting is harder to excuse. On the plus side, the action sequences were surprisingly well executed for its budget. No complaints there. While full of leaking plot holes, what kept this out of any danger of sinking were the underlying inventive Sci-Fi themes. I nearly gave up on it on several times when the storyline played out like a jukebox of old "movies" - where you could hum the cliches in your sleep, but boy was I glad I perservered. One of the best payoffs in recent memory. Such a shame the journey never came to close to that kind of class.