Occupation: Rainfall

For Pete's sake, so much elitist posturing. A movie can just be fun, and this one is. Yes, it's your standard alien invasion movie, but it has amazing visual effects, neat makeup and most importantly, rousing excitement. If this was a horrible film, I'd say so. No, I don't work for the studio. No, I'm not friends with the director. But as much as I love Seven Samurai, I can also appreciate having a good time. So chill out and have some fun!

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

I am a little apprehensive about the authenticity of the reviews on this page. This is an honest user review with no affiliation to the film.

This movie is action-packed with some incredible CGI and was, overall, relatively entertaining. The story-line was not fantastic but okay, by all standards a typical alien invasion must-save-the-world-at-all-costs vibe. However, it was unfortunately let down by some very sub-par acting (unfortunately by some of the main characters), some bad script and so much flashing/CGI/chaos during war scenes that it was sometimes hard to keep up with what was going on (perhaps deliberate to create drama but sometimes felt overdone).

Overall, I would say that this was an improvement on the first film (particularly in terms of CGI and overall production quality) but still lacked in its choice of actors and script.

I honestly question the truth behind some of these reviews. Very apparent that they don't match the film once you watch it.

Bad acting, uninteresting storyline and just tries too hard.

I walked out.

I'm not going to rate this highly just because I should support local talent. Let's call an apple and apple and a sub par movie a sub par movie.

Not good.

This isn't 10 stars nor is i 1 star - so ignore those reviews. If you saw the first movie then you are getting nothing better than that. The acting is quite poor as is the camera work. Just know it's 2 hours and a bit and it never quite gets any good at all.

Australians can make impressive movies (go see The Dry) but this one is a bit embarrassing and shouldn't be in cinemas, should have gone straight to Netflix