The Pond

I have been enjoying a lot of indie flicks lately, but this was infuriating vapid from every perspective.

The experience of watching this was like continuing to read a book you are not enjoying.

Some stiff acting, that to me felt intentional. Great visuals and camera work. In my opinion, this story is a great concept that went beyond my expectations of "hallucinations" that are often done in these types of movies. Not a movie for the casual viewer, certainly worth the watch if you like strange films and the occult.

It's very possible that I missed certain nuance throughout this film that further expanded the actual story...but it just was not good and did not make sense. It is shot well, but the acting is subpar, the characters are not properly explained, the dialogue is clunky, and it uses an audio overlay instead of live audio...so you see their lips moving but it's clear you're hearing something different.

The plot is some guy testing a water source and interacting with hallucinations that aren't hallucinations? It's not explained. It's just people walking around with paper bags on their heads and the main character losing his mind but nothing is explained at all. They attempt an explanation between the main character and his University lead and it is just word salad with a doom dressing.

It's just not a good story line ultimately, and that's it's entire issue. It had the budget and film crew to do something really creative, the story could have been really interesting, but the director chose to be vague when it came to the plot so you simply don't care what happens by the end because you're so bored or confused.

Definitely not a movie for everybody, really makes you think afterwards. I saw the trailer and recognized symbols that intrigued me right away since I'm interested into occult-like movies. Now that I've watched it, I somewhat grasped the idea, but I'll have to watch it again in order to fully understand the ending. Liked the portrayal of the seven princes of Hell. Some of the acting was a bit over the top, though.

One star for the cinematography, another star for the overall production, the last but not least for the nice looking wife.