The Hive

I will say that I enjoyed this movie. Now I know there were some things in the movie I didn't believe completely meshed well and some scenes weren't explained well enough for me but overall I think they did a really good job.

Went in this movie thinking that it could be a host of many clichéd themes and I should be prepared to drop it at the half way mark in the movie. After the 30 minute mark I can say that the movie had me at a point where I needed to watch it till the end. Now the ending was not as exciting as I hoped for but at least it gave me some type of finality.

Now I know my review wasn't very descriptive on the storyline or the characters but I will say this, try to avoid any reviews that give anything away. The movie is much better when you have no clue on what's going on from the very beginning.

I will admit upfront, this film left a really horrible taste in my mouth.

So much so that it even soured my feelings towards Nerdist and Chris Hardwick.

I know his M.O. is to be very positive about everything, and upbeat. But this movie just wasn't good.

If you are giving it a HUGE pass because it is low-budget, maybe you could forgive it some of its mistakes.

I was ready to walk out after 10 minutes because of a sound design element that was quite literally painful. From Bravest Warriors: "It's like making Oatmeal cry..." Catbug:"Why would you do that?" Why would you hurt your audience? That is lazy filmmaking.

All of the characters were unlikeable bullies. I rooted for no one and wanted them all to die.

The visual design was for stylistic purposes and actually violated filmic grammar in ways I just could not forgive.

Blacklight? Why? Totally non-diegetic, which is fine, but could not forgive it especially compared to other issues.

Oh, let me do First Person POV shots as Over-The-Shoulder shots, SOMETIMES. Why? I'm confused.

Let me have blinking lights/strobe effect FOR NO REASON, other than to make the shot painful to look at. Thanks.

The love story didn't really work for me either. There was ONE SCENE where it was almost poignant (the one with the strobe lights), but I didn't even want to watch it because the cinematography was so annoying.

Nor did I find the gore effects particularly interesting either.

I didn't like the movie. I didn't enjoy watching it. I didn't like the score (which was also a major selling point of the film).

It was all over the place. And there there was weird unnecessarily sexualized slut-shaming/emasculation dialogue that I also did not like at all.

The whole big social networking allegory was also not very strong or sold well in the movie itself. You get that more from reading critique on it than what you can actually see in the film text itself.

Maybe I am too old.

I love genre movies. I love the surprise little indies.

But I was sitting in my seat fuming, just waiting for it to end. I felt lied to by the Nerdist stamp of approval.

To me it is totally skippable. Unless you are OK with starting a movie that it is OK to shut off before you finish.

Deserves recognition for bringing a different angle to the vampire/zombie/horror genre's well-worn formula, although on reflection very little really happens and a lot is left unexplained. The young leads do well.

My quick rating - 6,6/10. I was completely surprised by this movie (especially after reading a review or two). This was a very well crafted film, almost to the point that I think the creators may have overshot their original idea in the process. At one point it was almost like a "Holy smokes, we could do this now...." moment and the story shifted. I can't say for sure that happened since I have nothing to do with the flick, but check it out yourself. The acting was done well, for this type of film since 3/4 of the time, they had to be possessed and spit out tar lol. The makeup was done well since they all were coated in fluids almost throughout the film. I guess letting you know that a young adult wakes with complete amnesia locked in a room and must figure out what happens and why via notes left by himself? and also flashbacks he has. This involves paying attention to the movie or you will get lost since this is filmed in a music video style (or normal terms, no camera shot lasts more then 10 seconds). I think somewhere hidden in here was a deeper message that should be sorted out for each viewer. Overall, I see a very unheard of flick that flies in under the radar and should be given some serious attention. David Yarovsky has created a very deep film and I look forward to more of his work.

I'm actually surprised that MTV had nothing to do with this film because it had MTV written all over it. Cast of beautiful people, poor dialogue, and a cheesy love story. Right from the get go this felt like the first episode to a really bad MTV series (not that any of them are good). I stuck with it because I hate to judge a movie without seeing it to the end, but I am kind of regretting that now.

So the film is centered on a picture perfect teenage boy who wakes up in a blood soaked cabin and tries to recall what exactly happened. The story is told through poorly done flashbacks that try to move as fast as possible. That's one of my big problems with this, the pace of the film is actually too fast. They try to rush everything along in order to hold the audience's attention but really all it did for me is make me lose interest in what was going on. I didn't establish any kind of connection with the characters or the story because the fast pacing just made everything feel really cheesy and cheap.

Maybe I'm not the perfect person to be reviewing this movie, I am not a teenager and I feel like the is that main demographic that this film was going after. The cheesy romance and the lame jokes just fell flat on me but those are things that the MTV audience will probably enjoy. For me though I thought this was a pretty terrible film, after an hour of it I was really eager for it to just end. Other than some decent gore I really don't have many good things to say, wouldn't recommend it unless you are a fan of MTV type stuff.

3/10