Rising Fear

This genre of movie (apocalyptic, end of the world) are a dime a dozen. Most aren't worth the time invested. I have no idea who in the world Tom Getty is, but him and his family, who got 90% of the credits, hit a home run on a $6K budget. I can't imagine how they did it.

Let me give you a hint. Prior to putting this movie in the DVD player, I was re-watching huge budget ID2 on HBO.

Rising Fear / America Has Fallen kicked ID2's butt. Yeah, there were some lame parts to the film, but overall, it held together until the final frame. There are not a lot of movies that can claim such an accomplishment.

Tom, if you're reading this: Hope you get a nice deal for your next film. You and your crew deserve it.

I've been putting off seeing this because it seemed like a cheap cash grab on Olympics Has Fallen. And wow! I'm 10 minutes in the film and I want to watch it with an open mind, but boy does Tom Getty makes it really hard. First off, you cast yourself as the lead and direct the film? That is a big red flag unless you've has years of experience on either end of the camera, and then it's not always a good idea! The dialogue is forced, the effects are just as bad as a high schooler making a file with his friends on youtube with photoshop, the plot seemed interesting but the execution just ruined it. This is another film where the writers hoped on Google for acronyms that military and law enforcement use and picked the ones they thought sounded cool. Everyone is now dumber for watching this film. I award it no stars, and may God have mercy on Tom Gettys soul.

The special effects look like someone made them with Adobe After Effects or Blender on a rainy Sunday afternoon but the acting is not too bad and there are some nice plot twists. It's a decent action movie if you are not expecting much.

And I read it had a budget of $6000, which is amazing. I have seen way worse movies that cost millions (someone mentioned Independence Day Resurgence, that movie was one of them, see The Critical Drinker's takedown of it on YouTube.

Oh and I want the bad guy's mask. I saw it was a MSA mask in the close-up so it should be available on Amazon. When you're forced to wear a face mask because of the Wu Flu you could make the best of it and wear the most awesome one you can find.

Some movies are bad in such a way that they're entertaining or amusing. This is not such a movie. This one is just painful to watch and painful to listen to because the directing, editing, and acting is all so bad. At one point early on the doughy, half-dimensional "star" was being tortured and I actually envied him because he wasn't sitting on my couch watching this movie.

I gave it 2 stars instead of 1 because it obeyed my commands and stopped when I pressed the Stop button.

I was scrolling thru the free movie site FREEVEE, and noticed a movie shot in my hometown of Pittsburgh that I never heard of before.

Being a Pittsburgh theatre tech and having worked on many film productions myself (Silence of the Lambs, Hoffa, etc) I decided to give it a shot.

I could tell that this was low budget, but the photography and editing was very good and amped the tension. The two lead actors were convincing. My only complaint was the sound quality. The story is good and deserves a big budget treatment.

After viewing I gave it 4 stars, but when I found out that Tom Getty was responsible for EVERYTHING! Writer, director, editor, sound, composer, lead actor, breakfast burritos :-) on a $6000 budget, I bumped it to 6 stars.

Cheers.