Occupation: Rainfall

Plenty of action and special effects but the storyline is a confusing mess. Don't buy all the high ratings 4 is about right.

Wanted to like this film but can't for the life of me understand how it rates here as well as it does. Started well but soon deteriorates into a chaotic mess. Most of the effects and live action sequences are confused and lack impact. The performances are amateurish to acceptable. Over long and still there is "Chapter 2!" - Makes one appreciate "Beyond Skyline".

I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark on the big screen and it was one of the most glorious and spectacular cinematic experiences in my lifetime. To see these classics on the big screen just makes me happy and it's one of the greatest and most finely executed blockbusters that never gets old. Almost immediately after that, I watched Occupation: Rainfall... it became a reminder as to why I'm frustrated by today's modern blockbusters.

The only thing that's worth complimenting about Occupation: Rainfall is that it's an Australian effort to make a regional blockbuster and I'm interested to know the budget and filmmaking process behind the film. There's clearly a larger budget than the first film and Occupation: Rainfall presents itself as an ambitious sequel so it's going all out with what it has and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't impressed by the overall efforts... but crikey, it's about as dumb and irritating as a Hollywood blockbuster, and just because it's a bigger film doesn't mean it's better.

Occupation: Rainfall is visually unpleasant viewing from start to finish. It wants to be a visual spectacle, but it suffers largely from an overabundance of terrible CGI, poor lighting and lens flares, and noticeable green screen. Accompanied by a generic score and overwhelmingly loud sound design that can make dialogue incomprehensible, it's a technical mess. It also has editing so irritating that it gave me Resident Evil: The Final Chapter flashbacks, particularly in one action sequence towards the climax. The action does have entertainment value and I did enjoy it... whenever it was clear and comprehensible (that was rare) and I had more fun counting the jumpcuts in my mind.

While Occupation: Rainfall was never going to be great story-wise, it's also boring. Some of the dialogue is awful, the characterisations feel thin and the storytelling reeks of a generic nature, but where the writing tremendously fails is in its attempts to craft emotion. The emotional beats felt like unearned attempts to create audience investment and at the same time, it awkwardly injects comic relief that proves more to be distracting than unfunny, causing Occupation: Rainfall to suffer from tonal inconsistencies. Most of the performances fall flat to the point of being forgettable, but I was especially disappointed to see Jason Isaacs wasted in a terrible voice role and Ken Jeong deserves better comic material than what he's given. It's a blockbuster full of so many sci-fi clichés and ill-judged decisions that it led me to wonder how this got made. And knowing that the first movie played at only 16 cinemas and made $35,111 from a $6 million budget, it seems a third movie will be inevitably greenlit. And that's hinted by the atrocious cliffhanger ending, which is desperate to create a new Australian film franchise and go Full Hollywood on us.

Watching movies like Occupation: Rainfall mostly shows what's wrong with modern blockbusters. While I'll admit I'm impressed by the production values, some of the action and the overall ambition put into the direction, they all led to a safe and painfully generic end result that doesn't have much heart and it fails when it comes to both the technical and storytelling elements.

Plot and Characters (2/10) Presentation and Direction (4/10) Acting (4/10) Script (2/10) Setting/Locations (4/10) Tone/Action (4/10) Cinematography/Visuals (4/10) Sound/Music (4/10) Editing (2/10) Pacing/Length (2/10)

Score: 32/100.

LIKES: +Ambitious production values +Some entertainment value in the action

DISLIKES: -Flat, wasted performances -Generic story relies on safe clichés and unearned emotion -Uninteresting, thin characters -Messy visuals and editing -Irritatingly loud sound design -Slightly overlong runtime, boring pacing

Talk about milking the action scenes; of the 128 minute runtime of this well-funded B-movie, half is many unnecessarily long, dragged out and pointless action scenes, that are also poorly choreographed.

The other half is the most convoluted and basic-as-it-gets cliched story, from a frustratingly derivative screenplay. There are more plot and technical issues than running-time minutes. If you take every popular sci-fi like Star Wars, Star Trek etc, and throw them in a blender, this is the story you would get.

It's a shame, because the although overused and mostly dated S/VFX, alongside some excellent prosthetic costumes, and for the most part some adequate acting (how the heck did Ken Jeong end up in this?), this film had tons of potential. I never saw the first one, which apparently was much worse than this one, but who if funding this sinking ship? And there's going to be a part 3?! Are the Australian tax write-off's for lost revenue that amazing?

Had writer and director Luke Sparke at least consulted a seasoned sci-fi writer, there'd be hope for a cohesive story that would have continuity - and be exciting. Maybe he'll figure that out for part 3. And please stop that annoying, unfitting and overbearing non-stop score on your next film, I wanted to stick pencils in my ears to stop the pain. It's a very generous 5/10 from me.

When I see reviews like this I get really suspicious about the legitimacy of the reviews on IMDB. Yes, I know its an Aussie movie and support the Australian film industry and everything. But to have crew members or friends come and put up reviews which are just not accurate is lying to people. The movie has great special effects, really amazing. No complaints there. But that's about all it has going for it. The story is so disjointed and incongruent, it just doesn't flow. One minute people are in one place, and the story skips and you're like "did I just miss something?". There's also notable continuity errors. An example is one of the actors gets splashed by 'clear' alien blood, then in the next shot its a blue/black colour. I don't believe this is just a case of 'its not your taste in movies', I'm a big sci-fi fan, it's just some people didn't do their job well on this movie - mainly the screen writers. There's other good Aussie movies out at the moment which are far better made, like 'Dry' or 'The Furnace' - I'd recommend them over this.