Hostile

Up late and found this movie. No need nitpicking this movie, just enjoy it. It's pretty damn good.

Movie has a great premise and an interesting setup similar to "Buried", "Locke" or "The Wall", where most of the action is just the lone protagonist communicating with disembodied voices on a radio or cellphone. The post-apocalypse narrative was what I came for, so I was disappointed that so much of the film's scant 83 minute runtime is given over to a distractingly creepy "Pretty Woman"-style romance subplot presented as flashbacks. And when I say it's creepy, I don't mean in the way you want your horror movies to be. I mean the way the controlling, wealthy romantic interest, having met the main character once, later follows her home and then later still imprisons her in his own home until she kicks her heroin habit and falls in love with him. Stockholm Syndrome? The movie acts like this is normal and sweet.

Back in the main storyline, the titular "Hostile" creature is well designed and well played with the correct kind of creepiness to his movements and appearances. The standoff between the creature and Juliette eventually reaches its necessary showdown, to good effect with some nice echoes to "Predator".

This post-apocalyptic love story could have been very good, even great, had it not been for the jarring back-and-forth jumping between two different timelines.

The main plot-line finds our heroine injured and alone in a barren, zombie-infested no-man's land, hunted by a spindly creature with a bad skin condition. This situation could have been a nerve-wracking viewing experience, had the director not decided to splice scenes of her "life before" throughout the full run-time of the movie. This breaks the tension EVERY TIME, in both narratives.

If you want to tell a backstory, just tell it and get it over with!

The acting, music and cinematography was adequate.

Hostile is actually a good movie, but you have to make it to the end to figure that out. There is not nearly enough backstory to make much sense of things, and the ending, although touching, doesn't make logistical sense. Maybe fate? My suggestion? Lower your expectations. Don't analyze it too much. And expect a love story more than anything else. You do that, you'll enjoy this movie.

6/10- Comes together nicely (although not logically)

It stands out in the overused zombie genre with its combination of horror (a bit?) and drama. Pace is slow with the amount of flashbacks but it pays off in the end. Don't expect to get a lot of explanation behind the apocalypse though.