High school Freshman Dawson Leery made a better production in his first attempt than this movie. This movie does so many things badly. A lot are the little things. One of the biggest flaws is that scenes dwell too long. Action needs to start sooner and the scenes need to cut sooner. For example when Hope gets in the truck to leave with Gabe the first time, the scene dwells while they get in the truck, and while he starts the truck, and while he backs out. One time wouldn't be a big deal but that's the way the whole movie is shot.
Camera work was terrible. In an early scene Ethan falls over while grabbing his bag. Since the scene is shot through the car, Ethan falls completely out of the picture. To be cute, when he gets up, he and Joy "bump" into each other. Just before that, there was an overly long car ride conversation. Besides being too long and too drab, every time Joy turned her head there was a red light reflection in her eyes that made her look creepy like a horror movie. That was definitely not the tone the scene was going for. The flashbacks during Joy's recounting of the past tragedy are stupid and unnecessary - definitely amateurish.
Humor is questionable. The four foot tree scene wasn't funny unless this is Napoleon Dynamite.
Sets looked just shabby enough that they were probably someone's own house.
Dialogue was totally flat and lame.
Acting! Oh my! I cringed every time Stink Cain, the father, was on screen.
Part of me kept wondering if this was some kind of parody, but if that's the case it wasn't obvious enough. But I should have turned it off when I saw it was a "Candy Cain" production written by "Candy Cain".
I could go on and on because there are so many examples of the various problems. Suffice it to say even the ending is poor. The climax is an original song with montage video and even this is too long.
