Paintball

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning

The premise behind this abysmal action thriller has a group of people going for a good old bit of paint ball, only to find themselves really fighting to stay alive as a barrage of real bullets are fired at them. But the characters are never developed or explored in any way, so it's impossible to care about any of them. Needless to say, there is no air of tension or suspense whatsoever, and the acting is so bad none of them have any life anyway, as though just running around shouting and screaming incoherently at each other gives them any life. Not that there was anything special to see there anyway, just the usual generic stereotypes typical for this genre. And here we have yet another film that hasn't learned the modern trend of shaking the camera around and darkening the lens is an off putting and annoying one rather than an endearing one. One to flee all round. *

I guess pun intended with the summary line. The idea is really good, but the movie itself isn't. It's a shame, that they couldn't make something out of it. The title gives away a little bit and of course you can imagine, that this won't be a regular Paintball game, that you will watch in this movie.

There are quite a few neat scenes, but especially one gimmick (where the camera uses a filter and therefor the picture you're seeing is "different") that it uses, wears off pretty quickly. Add to that, whiny characters (not all, but too many) and not that many different ones, so you could root for a particular character. It moves along too slow and any tension that gets build up, is destroyed pretty quickly. Some nice (gory) scenes won't help that either (not to mention, that some of them are shot through the aforementioned filter, which is really bad).

I really don't care for modern horror films that much. Many of them just seem so terrible that I usually don't bother with them. "Paintball" is yet another example of unoriginal and cliché horror. "Paintball" is another great example of not just a bad horror movie, but also a bad action movie.

8 people are dropped into the wilderness to compete in a paintball tournament. However, they come to realize that the game is more deadly than they thought as they find out that the enemies are using actual guns instead of paintball guns to hunt and kill them.

Firstly, my biggest problem with this movie is how badly written the characters are. There is literally no depth at all to any of them. I didn't care at all when they died off. In this case, however, I was actually looking forward for the characters to die because the movie was so bad, I was eager for it to end. Character development matters. Take these 3 words and tweet it to everyone who has ever thought of directing a horror movie.

Also, most of the characters are idiots. When one of them was being shot at, he ran right out into the middle of combat making him completely vulnerable just to get himself shot and killed. Also, some of the characters behave in ways no one would behave in in real life. When one of them was in trouble, instead of helping him, his friend just took his bulletproof vest and left him to die when he had more than enough time to save him. At one point in the movie, one of the other characters pushed someone into a trap causing her to die for no apparent reason whatsoever. There is no reason for him to do what he did. The movie tried to have him go insane but that was a very unrealistic and lazy way to kill off one of the characters. Also, one of the characters lost his mind and ran away from the group leaving himself vulnerable and he got himself killed because of his action. That was another unrealistic and lazy way to kill off a character. Also, when one of the characters picked up a machete and turned around, she stabbed one of her friends, killing her. That was yet another lazy and stupid way to kill off a character. Because of this, I was easily able to predict when each character was going to die because of their stupidity and how predictable the movie is. In short, this movie has some of the most idiotic and deficient movie characters ever put to screen.

As for the action, it's just typical gunfights and not much more. There was nothing impressive in any of them and despite a long take near the beginning, nothing else stood out whatsoever. What I really hated about them was the shaky camera. I have no idea why so many people still do this. Moviegoers hate it when movies have this. It distracts us from the movie and it gives me a headache. It is also bad cinematography in my opinion.

Like most low-budget, modern horror movies, the acting is garbage. The reason this is so common is because many good actors know better than to star in modern horror movies because they know that they will ruin their careers by doing so. Many horror movie directors are well aware of this so they hire those actors who are very untalented and take any role to get a paycheck. They hope that they will be successful enough to hire great actors. However, the movies they make are so bad that they usually sell poorly so their careers usually don't last very long. None of the actors in this movie are impressive at all and I felt that none of them gave a good performance.

Also, the ending left me more than underwhelmed. I was hoping for an explanation for what went on in the movie and I didn't get much of one. It barely contained any exposition and I was more confused in the end then I was in the beginning. Its ending is much too thin. The movie doesn't provide enough clues in order for me to be able to speculate a theory about what I think the origin of the area they were in is.

The only reason this doesn't get a 1/10 is that the premise is actually pretty good and creative for once. The movie shows some promise in the opening 10 minutes and it actually has an original concept. Also, it actually has a pretty decent long take. Unfortunately, the movie ruins any minimal hopes I had for it after 15 minutes.

In conclusion, if you don't mind the style over substance, idiotic characters, and unoriginal and poorly-executed action sequences and if you just like watching senseless gun-battles then this movie is for you. However, if you don't like that then you're likely going to find this to be yet another worthless horror movie which is completely inferior to dozens of other classic action, war, and horror movies out there which are actually well made. My tip is to avoid this at all costs.

Some whiny and annoying card-board characters are dropped off in the field where the games with the opposing team will be held.After some paintball sessions an unknown hunter begins to kill them using real ammo."Paintball" is a highly derivative survival flick which reminded me "The Zero Boys" or "Masterblaster"(both flicks from 80's).The characters are annoying and not developed,the plot is predictable and there is plenty of clichés.The cinematography is shaky and the killings shot via grey night vision quickly become irritating.If you want a good survival flick check out "Rituals","Deliverance" or "Hunter's Blood".Unfortunately "Paintball" is one to avoid.5 out of 10.

I'm reviewing this as a curiosity, possibly the worst I've ever seen. It's not one of those so bad it's good, more so bad that, yawn, who could ever care? So what are the problems? No story – but that's not unusual in a film like this. No characters – can also happen in this kind of softish horror, but there's usually someone, even if badly acted and paper-thin, to latch onto. Not here. Makes no sense – frequently a problem in horror of all kinds and here it's made worse by the fact that there's absolutely nothing to hook you in and pull you along. Unexplained stuff happens all the time - example: why not take the car with keys in it and how did we get from there to railroad tracks? Maybe if I'd cared even a little bit, I'd have paid more attention and just maybe made a bit more sense of it.

So what does happen? People run around a lot, rarely for any sensible reason. They shout a lot, usually all at the same time so you can't tell what any of them are shouting. The women (and only them) scream, gasp and sob a lot – not that unreasonable when nasty stuff starts up, but I suspect plenty of men would do the same in the unlikely event that real life could ever be remotely like this.

This movie is a perfect 1. There's nothing here worth seeing, the kind of thing I never get to see because I walk out/ switch channels/ throw the DVD in the garbage if even the opening 5-10 minutes are this bad. This time I made myself watch, waiting for something interesting to happen. It never did and I wasted 90 minutes of my life. Don't make the same mistake.