Radiant

This movie is simply rubbish. I have to say I am an expert of rubbish movies. I reserve the "1" rating for movies that are rubbish but funny, but this film is just tedious and certainly not crappy in a funny way but crappy in a crappy way. It gets a "2" so those of you out there can distinguish between the ones that will make you laugh and the ones that will make you fall asleep. There are scenes in this movie where the actors are looking at something, their expressions are of amazement and there wide eyes and slack jaws tell the audience that what they are looking at is going to be profoundly amazing, this simply isn't it's just a cupboard or even more desert. It has to be pretty god damn awful for me to walk out, let me tell you, I walked out and so did quite a few people.

The story here is a captivating one, four people three of which are accidentally infected by this man made virus which is suppose to kill off other viruses but hasn't been tested enough to be sure of what it really does. As they wonder and wait in fear to see what will happen they decide to flee into the desert rather than become guinea pigs in a lab somewhere and wait it out to see what happens without infecting other innocent people. I see some other reviews for Radiant that suggest that the film is boring, well I think one of the problems is the ways the film was promoted, this isn't your typical "Hollywood" zombie like film but it was never made to be that type of film. Instead this is a character driven sci-fi thriller that instead shows a much more realistic take on what could possibly happen in case something like this were to ever occur. In spots you can see where the film suffers a bit from it's low budget but over-all the settings and acting give the film a realistic feel, the cast did such a terrific job, I was taken in by their characters and really began to care for them. The story is slow but it is deliberate, you are not getting a horror film here but instead a science fiction film that is just that so don't go into this thinking you aer going to watch another "Resident Evil", and you are going to find it to be as thought-provoking as I did. I thought that the film-makers did a great job at creating a thinking man's sci-fi, the kind that are never made anymore. This is Writer/Director, Steve Mahone's debut film and if this is any indication of the kind of cinema we are going to see from this man then I certainly look forward to what he has to offer next. The bottom line is you need to know what you are getting here and I hope my take on it helps in doing so, if you get a chance to see the find do so and make your own mind up on how it is, I thought for the budget the story and characters did a terrific job at setting a mood that is certainly desperate.

This movie is about a group of people who are infected by a powerful man-made virus. They are pursued by government men into the desert.

The premise of the film is quite interesting but is hampered by the fact that the delivery is extremely boring. At no point does the film engage with the viewer on any level. Granted, the miniscule budget is a problem but is not the reason for the film's failure. Much more at fault is the very po-faced delivery. There is a great deal of narration but, unfortunately, the narrator has an annoyingly over-dramatic voice. Very little seems to happen to these people and well before the end you will be rooting for the government men - the sooner they kill the protagonists the sooner the movie will end. A much better title for this film would have been Four People Run About In The Desert With Some Stock Footage Of A Helicopter. Overall, very tedious.

I was privileged to see this movie on two occasions, first being at the Dallas premiere. If you like to actually use your brain during a film, a film that has all of the elements that allow anyone to watch and associate instances in their life, dreams, or fears then this is the film you cannot miss. The acting and cinematography are phenomenal and quite literally pull your darkest psyche into the forefront while you try to keep up with the ever changing influences on the characters, while still trying to associate your own decisions and beliefs with the responses confronted by the characters throughout the carousel of what if's that are displayed throughout the storyline. Without giving anything away, this is one of the pinnacles of the independent scifi thrillers in recent memory that absolutely walks through the gray area of real life and fiction. An area that collectively, as a human race, we are are going to have to decipher more and more as we progress in medicine and technology. I would recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys walking out of a theater or seeing the credits role on their TV at home and enjoys deciphering the film and it's parallel avenues in the life you see around you.

To truly appreciate this movie one needs to forget about the constraints put on it by the low budget. The visuals can be a little tough to handle sometimes, but they are more than made up for by the innovative story, editing, and soundtrack.

It seems that people want to degrade the movie for its low production value, but it is not a stretch when I say this movie reminds me a lot of early Cronenberg: enigmatic scientist makes a medical discovery which may or may not be effective and when it is tried on volunteer subjects (who soon become tortured patients) the outcomes are not what had been predicted. And all of done on a shoestring budget with laughable special effects (the parasites which resemble turds in SHIVERS).

There is too much good writing to call this movie trash and while the acting can seem forced in spots, some seems so natural that it is impossible not to feel the emotion of the characters. For example, the tears of Ed (James Cable) in the latter part of the film would be shared by anyone who spent a life afraid of interpersonal communication only to make friends with the same "test subjects" he was supposed to be monitoring. Ed remains the creep -the Igor figure of the film- for most of the plot, but the film ends with him as the character with whom we most identify.

The plot is slow to develop, but for good reason. This is not a sci-fi/horror film, this is straight science-fiction. The depth of relationships matters much more than the gore. All of these people -even the government agents- are pawns for more powerful agencies. It is meant to be cerebral. In the end Ed is able to break free from the system and begin to see the constraints of the structure he had believed in for so long.

The editing can be called into question, but with a larger budget it would not even be an issue. The soundtrack is seamless and adds the right amount of intensity and anxiousness to the film.

The nascent elements are there for some good, novel film-making. I look forward to future SILOmedia productions.

-El Profesor