The Axiom

For me it was one of those horror films that when I'm not screaming at the characters about how stupid they are, I'm laughing at how poorly their lines are delivered. It's a creepy premise but even that quickly fades by the time the third act approaches. How many times have you seen a horror film where a character sees/experiences a traumatic supernatural event, and then when the chaos passes, they say nothing happened and go about business as usual? Strangled by a vengeful spirit? Her actual explanation: "I must have just seen a rat." I mean even being assaulted by a human is enough to shake a woman so badly that she'd be visibly distraught for a while, but not this regular American girl, she handles it like a pro who has seen her share of mean stranglings. I'm sick of tropes like this and the old, "let's split up" or "I'll be right back" nonsense that was proven ineffective 20 years ago in satires like Scream. Somewhere buried in this garbage is an original idea, and it doesn't look like it was filmed on a cell phone, so for that I give it a 2.5/10.

Sadly there was room for more and I don't think the budget was the problem but quite possibly the execution and the script. It is not a bad movie yet far from something I would recommend to a fellow horror fan because it doesn't quite deliver, mostly lurks around a good premise without hitting the mark.

The Axiom has some ambition to it, it tries to tie as many ends as possible yet some remain sort of loose, not necessarily in a bad way but certainly not what we would expect out of a better production. So for an indie film, I think it did OK, my problem mostly lies in the fact that it managed to show a pretty good idea but failing to deliver as it should.

Thus all in all it comes down to everyone's opinion and nothing more. You wanna take a chance on it, do so. See how it goes down on you. Maybe don't expect much of it tho.

Cheers!

On strictly technical merits, this movie is just fine. Not a masterpiece, but there are better movies with worse directing, cinematography, and editing, so it functions well enough in that sense.

Unfortunately, it suffered from some pretty bad acting, though half the time, I couldn't tell how much of it was a flaw in the actors or a flaw in the writing, specifically the dialogue. The first half of the movie was plagued with terrible dialogue, weird acting choices, and, frankly, nonsensical behavior. The writer/director, Woods, makes the fatal mistake of being too eager to just move the plot along, to the point that it seemed that not a single one of the characters had even the slightest bit of situational awareness. Oddities occur, they do a double-take and move on. Someone says something strange, they do a double-take and move on. The situation seems off, they do a half-take and move on. And you didn't get much of a sense that any of these people even *liked* each other, let alone wanted to spend time with each other. Their interactions ranged from uncomfortable to a sense of sincere sublimated hatred. They seem to take any chance they can get to go off on their own little journeys, either physically or mentally, and seem to be completely unaware that their companions are actual people with personalities. And they work as quickly as possible to drop any potential issues that have been raised. This problem was most prevalent in the first half of the movie; the reason the second half was marginally better was simply because the plot itself started narrowing down their chances to behave irrationally. Not really much redemption there.

Their inexplicable behavior -- especially McKenzie who appears to be a borderline sociopath, sending her friends ahead to in a situation she knew was dangerous just to test it out, tying in to the fact that she knew it was dangerous but wouldn't tell anyone, followed by the fact that she knew her brother was in danger and knew what was happening but made no attempt to walk 5 feet and show him where she was -- ties into the incoherence of the underlying mythology. If you don't want to show all your cards, fine. But show at least a couple of them. The names, including the one the title derived from, seemed to have been invented sheerly because they "sound" interesting. None of it was actually given any foundation. The one -- and I do mean *one* -- concession to backstory was some vague story about what *might* be responsible (avoiding spoilers here), which took approximately 20 seconds of screentime. The rest was just some talk about what people do with the situation now. It's never explained how they derived their survival tactics and tools (why does the one phone work? how does what appears to be tomato soup work when drunk? why does said soup seem to randomly fail (it does so at least twice)? what's the deal with the guest book? how, for that matter, did the character take a half-second glance to know exactly what it was? and, ranging further afield, how does Ms. Temporary Final Girl escape the enemy in her penultimate fight? why was the one girl so insanely impressed by the other girl's ability to gently lower an axe and somehow defeat a lock? why did the brother seem almost upset that he was expected to care about his missing sister? and...I could go on for pages here. Let's just say the backstory and characterizations were criminally neglected.

It was a cool enough concept, which is why I watched in the first place. But I get the feeling that the director/writer didn't know how to build an actual coherent story. The dialogue was something I could have written the entirety of in a single evening and not been remotely taxed to be clever or naturalistic. The concept deserved more conscientious world-building, and more effort in the dialogue writing from Woods.

I'm giving this a 5 because, as noted at the top, it was technically fine, and the monsters, while not particularly scary, were interesting enough due to the basic concept. (The movie relies almost entirely on some form of jump scare. I'm not one of those horror fans who whine about jump-scares in themselves. Jump-scares work, else movie-makers wouldn't keep using them. So they're fine...if you don't rely almost entirely on them. Offer some alternate paths to conveying horror. I mean, the movie even messed up the "creepy roadside building" -- no matter how repelled the characters act or how much they talk about it being creepy, that was simply not a creepy building. It was a rather nice edifice built from stone and mortar. Place like that can fetch a pretty penny in most places.)

Cool concept, but the acting, writing, and creatures were quite lacklustre.

Starting fast is a total understatement for this film which is a good thing because 3 seconds after clicking the play button you see a woman in a forest crying and pleading to an out of focused man to not make her go in there. This 2 min. Scene was crucial because what unravels creates good interest for a indie horror film that immediately falls right back into the normal boring realm of most indie horror films that start with 5 friends in a car driving somewhere unknown talking and jabbering about basically nothing. But after the 10 mins of jibber jabber it moves at a good pace and a unique storyline unveils. The acting isn't the worst but definitely not great the main actress and Leon the restaurant bar owner do OK but the over exposure of scenes that are too bright for the camera lens are dead giveaways of a poor budget. With that being said I do believe they utilized the budget very strategically for efx and make-up but there were still too many scenes with cinematic mishaps like differences in blood coloring sometimes it looked bright red and other times it appeared to be black. Most indie fans may be able to look past that and if you do this film provides a good twist about midway through. The jump scares from hallucinations, demonic possession and creepy monsters add a surprise element that's better than the average low budget flick and "The Axiom" should get kudos for pulling this off. Not a must watch but a pretty good one.