Temple

Oh wow guys. This represents Western ignorance? Man, that's deep. I know I've sure never seen a horror movie before where young American idiots ignored piles of blatant warning signs and got themselves killed in the woods by supernatural forces of evil. Thank goodness this brought Japan in to teach us this valuable lesson, especially since they're known for being so respectful of other cultures. Hur hur.

Forget about that though. Let's talk about how this movie is only 78 minutes long and is made up of about 63 minutes of build-up (and credits), leaving only around 15 minutes of jumbled, unsatisfying, lukewarm horror.

Let's talk about the fact that this movie has to promote itself by trying to invoke the names of more popular movies like You're Next and Blair Witch, but if you actually look at the credits you'll find that this was only written by the same writer of those, and was actually directed by that guy's brother who has nothing but cinematography credits to his name.

Makes sense though, doesn't it? The one positive thing I can say about this is it was certainly a well-shot film. Other than that though, it's an empty waste of time. Nothing but sightseeing shots and filler.

I had initially expected somewhat more from this horror movie, and I must admit that I was rather disappointed with the overall result of what the movie turned out to be.

The story told in "Temple" was pretty straight forward, although it didn't offer anything to the horror genre that hasn't already been done or seen in other horror movies.

The movie was surprisingly devoid of anything even remotely scary or impressive, and it just lulled itself into a tranquil pace that made it lose all momentum and drive. And it didn't help much that the characters were one-dimensional drones that served no purpose. This reflected badly on the actors and actresses, as they had surprisingly little to work with. Logan Huffman actually managed to perform somewhat adequately and keep the movie afloat.

If you enjoy a good horror movie, then this joined American and Japanese effort is not the best of choices to put your time and money.

It's literally pretty good until they just decided "we're done now" and it's over. It ends awkwardly abrupt. As if they dropped the camera mid scene and just said f$%# it

The film had beautiful photography direction, but the plot was unacceptable. It is literally a composition of erratic and incoherent plot points. The transition between these points was rather 'normal' in the beginning. However, there was such a lot of time invested in it, that the middle point was extremely rushed. I have never watched a movie that does not have an end. This film had a beginning and a middle - it lacked a denouement.

Natalia Warner's performance was atrocious. All she did was smile exaggeratedly in a tone that was quite reminiscent of a valley girl (without the 'oh my god's). There was a lot of subtlety in the feelings she had to convey, and not once was I convinced that I was seeing her as her character.

Brandon Sklenar, on the other hand, was promising, but he was purely decorative thanks to the predictability of his role. For such a small cast, that had a strong impact.

Character development was nonexistent. A group of three is in Japan and they decide to go a temple. We only know why they are there. That is pretty much it. Next thing we know is a repressed passion surfacing - though it was pretty evident from the first scenes.

Additionally, the sound effects were clumsily put together and did not have any fade-ins and fade-outs.

Finally, the Japanese cast was far superior to the American, but Logan Huffman's performance was acceptable, albeit constantly wearing a face in which he looked lost. I suspect this was a direction issue.

I always tell myself that even a bad movie will have something memorable and will be able to evoke some thoughts or feelings. Now, I do not consider this a bad movie, simply far from being a complete piece. As such, I am not sure what the takeaway is.

This was a film, that, yet again seemed to have the potential to have been much better. There just seemed to be too many things going on that didn't seem to be significant or didn't contribute to any conclusions. Some nice cinematography, some good music, but not the best story-line.