Beta Test

At the time of my review this is carrying a 7.1 score on IMDb. I'm left wondering if the user votes on this movie are bought from some click-farm in India.

So the premise of the movie is a chump who is the ultimate beta- tester for a game studio who gets to beta test a new game, only to find out he is actually controlling someone else in real life. As events unfold the uber-beta tester decides to "do the right thing" even under penalty of death.

As you can imagine, a movie that mixes video games and real-life footage has to be brilliantly convincing. This is not the case. At all. This carries, at best, SyFy production values in a movie with terrible CGI, awful acting and the result is, shamefully, something the actors will have to live with for the rest of their lives.

The "biggest fight scene" tries to cash in on Daredevil and the likes, but the premise is so contrived (and the execution so poor/unconvincing) that you'll avert your eyes or start laughing.

Sorry click-farmers... this is horrible.

BTW: if you remain unconvinced that this is not even worthy of a TV Movie, please bear in mind that it grossed $9000 box-office. mmmkkay?

Not 7.1. Not unless that is a scale of shittiness.

Hey, it's just a fun, mindless romp of urban science fiction with a great plot, decent directing, some sketchy dialog, good and bad acting, and you can even write a love poem while watching it and never miss a thing.

There is even a very 'Ballsy' stoke of genius in this movie, in that the scene from about 104:12 to 110:12 is a continuous shot. 6 full minutes. That took guts. I have to respect anyone who would do that and be willing to risk the whole movie. There was obvious no real risk here, and that's probably why it worked.

For the whiners out there who constantly wail: "I want my 2 hours back!" "Worst movie ever!" "I walked out in the first 10 minutes."...Just shut the hell up. You really do NOT how to watch a movie using basic 'discernment' techniques rather than judging the hell out of it like an old, angry housewife.

See, discernment allows an evaluation to grow while a judgement puts an idea or concept inside a contemplative box where it can never evolve beyond that place within your own mind where you originally judged it. That is indeed the most wretched excess of a personal 'opinion'. It wastes everyone's time and energy. You reviewers who prattle on like wounded princesses here are seriously lacking in the most basic of intellectual evaluations skills and shouldn't even be posting your reviews with educated adults. Jesus...

So, in regards to ANY movie, when you see the trailer and read some professional reviews, you pretty much know what you're in for. But anyone who plays the 'princess-victim' of utter disappointment after spending a dollar at Red Box seriously needs to ease off the meds.

...or at LEAST take some creative writing classes.

The movie starts with a seemingly interesting idea and that's the only good thing that I can say about it.

Unfortunately, as the story develops it turns to boring, amateurish cringe-fest. It's especially disappointing if you consider that Manu Bennett was in better shows (Spartacus, Arrow) and here you can see him in a lame role with lame fighting scenes and brain-cell destroying dialogues. To top that he still gives the best performance so you can imagine the rest of the cast.

I do not recommend watching it, unless you plan to use some mind-altering substance and even so it will probably be a bad experience.

In short: stupid storyline, half-baked concept, people with moronic behavior, badly choreographed and unrealistic fights.

Summary: Could have been a good movie but it had a very limited budget for an action movie making it very lame and lacking.

This a first person shooter game that mixed with reality. Its not a novel idea but you can get a good movie out of it. The movie had a really good interaction between the gamer and the characters.

FPS means a lot of gun shooting and action scenes but nothing of that happened. The action most of time without gun shooting and focus on hand to hand combat. The action scenes in general is below average just compare it with "Hardcore Henry" you will find a great difference in quality.Instead of the action scenes the movie is full of long conversations which in most of the time useless. This could have been used to make the movie a little bit realistic but it was a wasted opportunity. Most of the time a lot of unrealistic events happens with a lot plot holes.

So in the end I can say that it was a good story and the actors made some good job but the script and the film direction was a great mess. This may be due to limited production budget but in the end it really affected the quality of the movie.

After seeing the rating for this on here (currently at 7.0, although I suspect that will change) I thought that this might actually be really good.

But uhm, let's just say I think the director have a lot of good friends who are kind with their ratings.

It's not completely awful, but it's not that great either.

I've always liked Larenz Tate so it's cool to see him in something new, so there is always that, and he hasn't aged a day in 20 years (he's 41 believe it or not).

He plays a gamer who's been given a beta version of the latest game bound to conquer global fandom, and the plot is decent enough but it's just such a low-budget film and that shows in every aspect of the movie.

First of all the "game" that he's playing looks like it's well over 10 years old, and it simply doesn't make any sense why they couldn't just use real footage in the game scenes instead. Then at least Larenz would have a clear reason to be so blown away by the details in the game.

And the "twist" about the game of course would have made A lot more sense too.

Kevon Stover is one of the bad guys, and his attempts at being so stereotypically tough would make even Hulk Hogan cringe. I suppose that could be intentional to get a bit of 90's video-game feel to the character. But yeah, he's a chippendale appearantly which doesn't come as a surprise at all.

The first hour is still semi-watchable if you manage to look past the flaws but the last 25 minutes is a bit of a drag to say the least.