Recovery

I liked the opening scene. It had a lot of potential and the plot summary had me hooked. Still, I didn't expect anything great, but it was released in 2016 so I figured it would at least be a B-movie quality. I've seen better produced movies on the Lifetime channel. The actors were so awful. They bumbled around and had really strange reactions to things. The plot didn't flow at all, any tension that could have been built was thrown away by extremely amateur actors and dialogue. The action made no sense and the actors just kind of awkwardly played around with each other during "fight" scenes. Very poorly edited and ridiculous script. The most clumsy and incompetent movie I've seen in a very long time.

The opening scene portends deeply disturbing notions by way of nasty, misogynist themes and violence. Thereafter the pacing is terribly slow - if we apply the model of conventional narrative structure, the "rising action" is mostly a flat plateau barely distinguishable from the "exposition," and more than half the runtime has eclipsed before it truly feels like the promised "horror-thriller" content is again showing up. This is rather troubling, but in addition: Is it just me? Did I have an abnormally unremarkable experience growing up in western Pennsylvania? Or are early scenes wholly unbelievable as the chief characters - high school students - drink alcohol and do drugs at massive parties, go out to clubs, apparently put all their personal information on social media, hang out with total strangers that they've only just met (online no less), and more?

In fairness, once the narrative does very belatedly pick up, 'Recovery' is duly engaging and executed pretty well. The cast is solid, the production design and art direction are splendid, and even lighting is employed notably well. I very much enjoy Giona Ostinelli's robust original music that lends strongly to the mood of any given scene. Director Darrell Wheat illustrates fine capability, especially in the latter half, and there are swell if grisly ideas in his story and the screenplay written with Kyle Arrington. The blood and gore look great, and the brutal violence, and I appreciate the hair and makeup work generally. Truthfully, at its best this is really well done, and I appreciate the obvious hard work that everyone put into it.

Would that the feature were a bit more mindful and balanced from the get-go. Half the runtime, about 40 minutes total, could probably be chopped up into only half its length without losing any substance. The excellence in the second half actually makes up a bit of ground for the weak start - a surprising "recovery," if you will. But the fact that there's anything to compensate for in the first place is an issue. When all is said and done this isn't half bad, and deserves a soft recommendation on account of its strengths. Bear in mind very necessary content warnings for not just significant violence, and specifically violence against women and associated themes that are all too real. Provided you don't mind when your horror-thriller entertainment is distinctly less than perfect, you could do a lot worse than 2016's 'Recovery.'

I read the reviews on here and honestly the movie isn't as bad as they want to make you believe. It's for sure not the greatest thriller horror ever but also not the worst. It's mostly the last fifteen minutes that aren't that great. And also the dialogues aren't that great either. I think it could have used a bit more gore. But nonetheless there are a couple moments of suspense. The beginning isn't bad either. The cast is what you expect to be with this kind of movies, not the greatest but at least they gave it a shot. I would just have made the last part of the movie differently. But unlike other movies, with this one I don't really regret watching it. I won't watch it a second time though.

Im just writing this as a warning to other viewers out there do not waste your time on this incredible piece of space waste. From the start the story line fails to be convincing and it just gets thinner as the movie stumbles forward. Sigh, the lousy generic inexpressive electronic dance music complete works as a great soundtrack to this preposterously boring movie. I'm glad i did not watch it sober anyway...when my girlfriend who had fallen asleep during this torture asked me how it ended when i woke up, my kind of good mood flew out the window, because i actually had forgotten about the whole 82 minutes and it just came back to me, the incredibly dumb and unrealistic ways the actors reacts to stuff happening in the movie, the lousy music, the boring setting, the missing logic everywhere. The actors should as soon as possible (if they have not already) quit their jobs and go beg to flip burgers or whatever. This was a catastrophe. face palm. Sigh. Please dear production company, don't make more movies, get a new start in your lives, start a cleaning company or something useful. Cause you actually don't know how to entertain, Have you ever watched movies at all? do you guys know what plots, storytelling, acting and logic means? Im so furious that people like you actually has enough time and money to fart out this nonsense, that is so damn hard to cope with...and the facts that you don't have an all awful review just breaks my heart and i have lost my faith in humanity decades ago but this is the dot over the i.

This starts with some men brutalizing a female captive. After catching a cheating boyfriend, Jessie (Kirby Bliss Blanton) and Kim (Rachel DiPillo) are new friends going out together into the night. Along the way, they are joined by Jessie's geek brother Miles (Alex Shaffer) and bad boy Logan (Samuel Larsen). Jessie loses her phone and Kim disappears. The remaining three uses an app to recover the phone.

The story is a little muddled about these characters. It turns out that there is a reason for that. While I like where this goes, it does come with issues. Most of this movie feels like a drunken night with a bunch of new friends who don't know each other. I've had those nights. I'm sure that all of you have too. Mostly, those nights end up with the group splintering. At times, that's this movie. It threatens to splinter into pieces. As for the ending, there are still issues and some of it doesn't make sense. They also keep doing the horror thing where nobody picks up a weapon or finish off the bad guys. Eventually, one does grab the hammer, but it is a frustrating trope.