The Valley of Tears

I see a lot of movies that you can watch with one eye closed and you still don't have any trouble following what's going on. If I know where a movie is going right from the start, I can't watch it. I get bored too easy because the filmmakers didn't really make any effort to challenge me. Now, to be fair, most movies aren't smart enough to challenge the audience. They are content to give the people what they think we want, and no further than that. They don't have any respect for the intelligence of the viewer.

Not so with "The Valley of Tears." Here's a movie that sets up a bunch of stuff, and don't even bother to answer all the questions it proposes. Why? Because, it doesn't need to. We, as an audience, are left to figure things out for ourselves, or not to. It's our choice.

Let me start by saying that the only reason I din't give this movie a rating of 1 out of 10 is that I quite liked the music in certain places throughout the film.

It takes an exceptionally bad level of film making to make a 90 minute film drag this much. Plot: nonsensical, characterisation: non-existent, dialogue: pathetic, acting: classes needed. Of the four it's hard to say which is worst, they really are all THAT bad.

My first thought after I had finished watching the film was that this must have been written and directed by one person. Because if any director had seen a script like this (and hadn't been the person responsible for it) this film would never have been made. I understand that the man responsible, Peter Engert, has a film called House of Terror coming out this year which he also wrote and directed. Suffice to say I don't think it'll be in line for any Oscars.

If you're considering watching this film, think again and then watch something else. If one of your friends or relatives forces you to watch this film, get them one of those Rudolph jumpers for Christmas.

Most importantly though, if through some hideous set of circumstances you do end up watching it, makes sure that afterwards you start eating healthier and exercising. After all, you'll need some way to get back the 90 minutes of your life that were wasted watching it.

I have to say that I really did want to give this movie a chance, even given the poor ratings, I really, really tried. Needless to say, this movie falls flat on it's face... no, grave, and now ranks at the very bottom of abyss of my considerable movie-viewing history (I own more than 400 DVD's and had 200+ VHS, before giving them away to my friends. No one buys VHS anymore, hence the freebies). Prior to this, I think "The Net 2.0" ranked as one of the lowest ratings I could give a film; at least in recent history, short of those films that were so bland that they have given me subconscious amnesia and I have so blissfully forgotten them {sigh}.

Where to start... I was very interested in the story line, as it sounded so promising replete with a fairly decent into, and figured since I had forced myself to sit through some really awful movies in my time, one more couldn't possibly hurt... Boy was I wrong! I couldn't even force sit through half of the movie, even though I gave it my very best effort (my wife would have smacked me if she knew I wasted this precious time so). Ultimately, the worst part of the movie is the god-awful acting; I mean come on, these guys didn't even try and made simple commercial actors look like seasoned professionals (think, if you can, actors from Turkish Star Wars... yup, I've seen that too and this was worse). You could probably gather together a group of people from your local 7-11 and end up with better acting skills in the group, and this is simply putting it lightly. The film was so bad that, after subjecting myself to the first 20-25 minutes of it, I could stand it no more. I know, I know, I had already sat through 1/3 of it, why couldn't I finish it? That is the question I asked myself, several times, but after scanning ahead, hoping for something better, I found I just couldn't stomach the bad, bad, bad... no, horrendous acting and had to put my suffering to rest. If the director wants to argue that I didn't give the film a chance or that I missed some pivotal point later in the film, I did stop check it every 10 minutes or so to see if the stand-ins somehow garnered some rudimentary acting skills, but unfortunately they had not. Perhaps the actual story itself was pretty decent, but only the most stalwart individual will ever find this so... unless you come out with a novella ans we can skip the misgivings altogether.

If you must subject yourself to this inhumane torture, please, please, please somebody post the first 5 minutes or so on YouTube, so that no one will even consider viewing this film under the false pretense that it has something to offer. Believe me, the story is compelling; however, the acting, or lack thereof, caused this film to be a still-birth... better yet, it annihilated the script, for lack of a better term, before it could see its first breath of hope.

BTW Given the 50/50 vote of totally crappy to "oh-bejeezus this film rockz!", after subjecting myself to this blather, I would consider with great certainty that the perps of the 10 votes (all 10 of you) are people that actually had something to do with the film; e.g., writer, director, actors, etc, trying to save face from a film that should never have met the DVD press. To those that are doing this, you should consider the concept of your own film, and hope to make things right.

I was so disappointed in the movies you can find in blockbuster, because every other film is a low-budget junk, so I challenged myself with Netflix, and they offer a lot more movies that I thought they had. The Valley of Tears was the third I rented; I watched it with my husband, because the premise was very exciting. Few days earlier we just lost one of our friends in a car accident, so we didn't want to watch comedies, actions or horror, but something that would make us feel better after loosing a friend. The film offered something that I never seen in movies, which is: it offered lots of thoughts without actually telling you the whole story. This film gave us a lots of sense of how to manage and accept death. We loved the fact that the director, Peter Engert didn't trick you with a twisted, weird end, but respectfully let you be part of the film and you could finish it on your own, if you are connected to the material. We did and we loved it!

I have to say, I liked this movie. It is pretty interesting, and is those kind of movies that will keep you thinking about it, even hours after you've watched it. The plot does seem a bit blurry through out the movie, but as the ending approaches it becomes more clear, what is going on. It was small details that at first will pass by unnoticed that will let you later realize how much they were hinting what was coming.

I do have to admit that I wish they would've give more in the ending.. although I'm not sure yet how much more they would've been able to push it, because in one hand, it was a definitely explanation to everything that happened, but than it keeps you waiting for more. This movie is a must-see .. if you liked Donnie Darko or any other movie that is not to obvious and actually gives the viewer a chance to analyze the plot as to just making it too easy and obvious to the audience like most movies do now days. overall... thumbs up for this.