Green River

This is a movie that I watched due to it being in a compilation pack that I won from a podcast. I've had this in my possession for a few years and decided to watch it. That pack by the way is called 8 Midnight Horror Movies - Hatchets & Cleavers. This is also another one that I don't necessarily think is a horror movie from this pack. It does go dark enough in the third act for me to include it here. However, it doesn't feature hatchets or cleavers.

Synopsis: haunted by her sister's mysterious disappearance years ago at Green River, Charisma Kavanagh (Danielle Franke) returns to silence her ghosts and make peace with the past.

We start this movie seeing a convertible driving along a road. There are deep woods on either side. Driving is Allison Chase (Kristina Hughes). With her is Charisma. They are heading up to a cabin that belonged to Charisma's family. They stopped off to get gas. It is there that Allison learns there are a high number of missing persons in the area. We also see that she has a moment where she zones out. She takes a pill to help ground her.

Outside with the car, Charisma realizes she knows the guy pumping the gas. His name is Charlie (Robert N. Lee) and he dated Charisma's sister when they were younger. Allison gets jealous and causes them to leave. I wondered at this point if they were dating or just friends.

Our couple then goes to a diner for food. They order salads, but what they get isn't what they were expecting. They pay and leave but get nervous as a man does as well. He drives a pick-up truck. This guy is also heading the same way they are. There is then an odd standoff as Charisma doesn't tell her to turn, causing Allison to turn around. This occurs when the pick-up is stopped, allowing Allison to go. The problem is that it is violating the laws of the road and the truck should go first. To put an end to this, Allison proceeds.

They settle in and head to bed. Their car alarm kept going off that night. Charisma tells Allison to just turn it off, but being that she is from the city, she refuses. She wants to know if someone messes with it as it is a long trip back to town. The problem is that the next morning, her battery is dead. The truck pulls up to the house and this causes the women to hide. They decide to steal his truck to head for help. This is just the start of the nightmare.

That is about the extent of what I wanted to give for my recap of the story as well as to introduce our characters. Before delving deeper, I did want to preface that this is a low-budget movie. I want to commend everyone involved here for making this. That is more than I can say. With that taken care, I think this has some good things going for it, but where they decided to go didn't work for me. Part of the problem that I can see is that there are so many writers on this project. I'm wondering if there were too many ideas introduced and pieces were chopped to fit things together that don't necessarily fit.

The first thing I should go over would be the crux of this movie. Charisma's sister disappeared a while ago. Allison and she are going to a family cabin. I'm guessing to clear their heads as well as to help her get over it. We see there are a bunch of missing people posters. All of them women. I'm almost guessing that they borrowed from the 'Green River Killer'. The only part of this that gets factored into the movie later is that Jack Walker (Bruce Peterson), who is the guy who left the diner and drove the pick-up, is accused of being the reason for all the disappearances. I think there's an interesting idea here. It is one we've seen before though. Where this goes in the third act was something I wasn't expecting and they could have leaned into that more.

I think I'll shift over to talking about our three leads. Allison is an interesting character in that we know she has a condition. She has pills to keep it in check. We never learn what it is though. There is a moment where she loses her pills. My issue there is that she never checks for them before leaving the cabin. Charisma finds them, but it is too late. The other problem there is that it wouldn't happen that fast, whatever the ailment is. I don't have much to say about Charisma outside she is the reason they are coming here. The only fleshing out we get of her is that her sister is missing. She and Allison also bicker constantly which made me dislike them both. Jack on the other hand is someone that give back-story to and that's it. We know that he is a veteran when he is looking at nature and hears things from the war. That also goes nowhere which was frustrating for me.

Since I've talked about the characters, let me go the acting. I'm not going to be too hard since they're all amateurs. I've already said that I can't stand Hughes and Franke's interactions. All they do is fight and bicker. They try to make Allison's character more interesting, but it comes off a bit flat. She does play crazy well enough; I will give her that. I did like Peterson in his role. None of them are given a lot to work with so I am factoring that in. The rest of the cast is fine. They're locals, friends and family. They were used in the best way which I can appreciate.

The last things to go into would deal with filmmaking. I'd say that the cinematography is fine. They don't do anything too out of the normal with it. The nature shots we got look good though. I will credit that. It does give that feeling of being stranded from town. There's not a lot in the way of effects. I did see a slip-up with a computer effect where instead of a flash from a gun, it said 'media'. That made me chuckle. Other than that, I did notice an issue with mixing as there was wind during a scene in the car. This is just another aspect that doesn't help. The soundtrack other than that was fine.

In conclusion, I wasn't a big fan of this movie. I think there was some interesting things that they could work with but didn't. It could be 'too many cooks in the kitchen'. This was filmed in Montana and that made it look great. It also makes it feel isolated, which is good. This is boring though, which isn't good for a film with a 90-minute runtime. The acting was amateurish, unfortunately to say. There just isn't a lot positive I can say outside of that.

My Rating: 3.5 out of 10.

I'll preface this by saying I know these are amateur actors so I'm trying to give the benefit of the doubt...

But I can't. This is a movie only in the sense that it's a series of shots that more or less follow each other, with what might be called dialogue. But the acting was some of the worst I've ever seen from the 2 leads, I wanted them to die immediately because they were so annoying. They constantly do things that no one in their situation would do if they were actually trying to survive. This is tbf something that alot of horror movies get wrong, but this movie gets everything else wrong too so don't excuse it.

What things you may ask??? Well there's the plot, I'd like to say the motivations make no sense, but we barely even know what they are. Character development does not exist in this movie. I have seen better in some video games like Resident Evil.

There is the mediocre camera work, it's like the director wanted to prove a point by having several similar shots in a sequence, but they appear choppy and repetitive and kind of irritated me. I kept waiting for it to get to the point and then there was no point. And like I said the characters constantly do things that make no sense, but they are supposed to be rational adults trying to survive in the wilderness??? Come on

It's disappointing because they did have an opportunity to make a cool movie that twisted the traditional "helpless girl lost in the woods running from killer" subgenre into something different where the roles are reversed. But then that attempt was probably discarded by what I assume was a new writer, except they tried to integrate it into what was already done and failed miserably. Well its one theory anyway. A different theory is this is the worst screenwriter in history.

Either way, I was mad at the people that made this, mad at Netflix for hosting it, and mad at myself for watching it. Wish I could erase this from my memory.

To the two reviewers who wrote positive reviews about this film: You're kidding, right? This has to be the worst movie I've ever seen. I was bored on the ride to the woods. These two actresses were so unconvincing as friends, that I found myself wondering why Charisma (surely this name deserved at least an explanation) and Allison (neurotic, unattractive, annoying, and a really bad actress inspired a new word: "bactress") would even be friends, much less travel into the woods together for what? a vacation? We are never told. No character development, no back story, no story whatsoever, and a predictable plot that has been done to DEATH: what was this director thinking? Low budget was not the problem here. The setting was the most interesting part of the movie. I can't remember when I've seen worst acting. I actually laughed out loud at "Allison's" attempts to act, and that actress had way too much screen time. I was hoping Jack would kill her to relieve my suffering. She was too annoying to be psychotic, and considering that Jack had been hit by a pick up truck, shot, stabbed, smacked around, and deprived of food and water for an entire day...I laughed some more at the ending because it's supposed to be what...eerie? shocking? ironic? surprising? NO, it was NONE OF THOSE because it was HORRIFYINGLY DEVOID of explanation, so much so that it was just confusing and further evidence of bad writing. There was so much opportunity to make a good thriller here, and it appears to be made by someone who didn't even care, someone with A.D.D., or someone who has never done this before. And car alarms don't run down batteries because they shut off after 10 minutes or so, OR, an owner can turn the alarm off with a remote switch from 15 ft. away. Come ON. And "Charisma" is not getting off the hook either. "Wanna take a shortcut? It's not as intimidating as it looks." One second later, she's fallen, and is hanging on by her fingernails begging her "friend" Allison to help her. Did the director look through the lens at that scene and say, "Cut. God job ladies. SO suspenseful. So...scary." I would have smacked Allison around and asked her, "What took you so long, b*tch?" And what kind of numb skull would you have to be to climb all the way to the top of a hill after an arduous hike through the woods only to burn up what's left of the cell phone battery listening to somebody's mother explaining how psychotic and dangerous her daughter is. Wouldn't it make more sense to say:"HEY, call 911 and send them to XYZ location NOW." So I'd say the writing was bad, the acting was very bad, and the directing was very, very bad. I'm so appalled that somebody would waste $5 making this film, that I can't write enough to tell anyone who's wondering: DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME ON THIS DRIVEL. You'll just be mad at yourself later. And to those of you who made this movie: don't give up those day jobs just yet because I watched every minute of your film, and I still don't know if Jack had anything to do with the disappearances of one, much less all, those girls on posters. That's too many women posted in a public place to escape notoriety...so, why would 2 young women see that, know that, and then go deep into the woods in that very same area where one of them lost a sister years earlier? Dumb.

I don't normally watch thrillers and this was incredible! I was on the edge of my seat waiting to see how it would all end up. The two lead actresses were intense and captivating. Some scenes were totally riveting. The camera work was also excellent. The actress playing Allison (Kristina Hughes) did an amazing job playing an emotionally unstable person. I especially loved her powerful scenes alone in the cabin with Jack. The actress playing Charisma (Danielle Franke) was also spectacular. I loved her scene in the woods when she was hearing the voices of a little girl. Her terror was infectious. If you like thrillers, this is a great one!

This has to be the worst movie ever. Are the two main characters retarded or something. I thought this entire movie was a joke. How could two people be so stupid? The writers make women out to be helpless retards. I was hoping after stealing the poor guys truck he would shoot the two main characters dead and the movie would be over. I mean, who funded this project? And who uses a remote control car lock on a convertible? The one who keeps popping Xanex is an idiot. The cell phone works in the river talking to mom, but not at the house. Between laughing and frustration in watching this movie. I have little faith in humanity and the movie business after watching this piece of crap. Anyone involved with the production of this movie should take a long hard look at their life's goals.