The Axiom

I understand the desire to cut small-budget movies a break but a 7.0 rating for this film might be deceptive for someone deciding if they want to commit a couple of hours to it. 'The Axiom' is a decent enough movie but it's inferior in nearly every way to the lower-rated but similar 'The Endless.' The latter film has a better script, better acting (except for Taylor Flowers who's great in this), better cinematography and a more self-assured sense of what kind of movie it is. 'The Axiom' is a combination of cosmic horror and monster movie that has some effective moments mixed in with some barely adequate ones. I'm not saying skip this film, I'm only warning you that it's a bit uneven and not deserving of it's current (early March 2019) 7.0 rating.

This is one of horrors that can't simply be said to deserve bad rating, but can't also deserve good one, because there are out there many better horror movies. What makes this good one is mystery, adventure, surprise, and weirdness. There is spiritual, religious, interesting world and dimensions. It's very good to be immersed into such dimensions because that way I was on the lookout for something that prevented me from being bored. But there is lack of explanation, good intro, real life scenarios like more people, animals, police, buildings, events. Everything somehow happened too quickly, in weird way, without good reason and explanation. There is lack of motive for occurrences and for the whole story.

The Axiom started out as an okay B-Movie. The picture quality is very good. The acting is also pretty decent. BUT the comic-relief guy was too much and really annoying. Aside from that small detail, I initially thought this really would turn out to be a decent watch. The intrigue and mystery was well put together. But then everything suddenly turned really cheesy and bad when they finally got to the cabin in the forest. I actually thought the monster makeup was pretty good so that's not the problem. It's just the script altogether is just really, really bad. It seems like they didn't know where to go with their story. It turned into boring nonsense and I stopped being invested in the movie. There is definitely something fishy going on with the ratings on the site. It's a pretty crappy movie with nice visuals, a 3 at best. By the time it ended I was down to a 2, however.

Cool concept, but the acting, writing, and creatures were quite lacklustre.

Starting fast is a total understatement for this film which is a good thing because 3 seconds after clicking the play button you see a woman in a forest crying and pleading to an out of focused man to not make her go in there. This 2 min. Scene was crucial because what unravels creates good interest for a indie horror film that immediately falls right back into the normal boring realm of most indie horror films that start with 5 friends in a car driving somewhere unknown talking and jabbering about basically nothing. But after the 10 mins of jibber jabber it moves at a good pace and a unique storyline unveils. The acting isn't the worst but definitely not great the main actress and Leon the restaurant bar owner do OK but the over exposure of scenes that are too bright for the camera lens are dead giveaways of a poor budget. With that being said I do believe they utilized the budget very strategically for efx and make-up but there were still too many scenes with cinematic mishaps like differences in blood coloring sometimes it looked bright red and other times it appeared to be black. Most indie fans may be able to look past that and if you do this film provides a good twist about midway through. The jump scares from hallucinations, demonic possession and creepy monsters add a surprise element that's better than the average low budget flick and "The Axiom" should get kudos for pulling this off. Not a must watch but a pretty good one.