lbo3410

Frankly I was more frightened by this stinker's total lack of substance than I was by anything going on in the story. The acting was laughingly amateurish and the dialog at times made me wonder if the actors had gone mute. These idiots had me so frustrated by their mindless behavior that I found myself rooting for the sicko from the Outback. "Hey pal, throw an extra shrimp on the bar-bie and while you're at it hurry up and kill off one more of these annoying people before I lose it!" I don't know who this Toby Hooper-wannabe filmmaker is, but whoever likened this s**t to the horror classic "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" must have been confusing it with "TCM-III 3-D." This is set in the Australian Outback were three dumb youngsters fall prey to a local wacko who lulls them into his isolated camp under the guise of helping fix their broker car. I won't waste any more space describing this joke of a plot or the pathetic direction, but suffice it to say writer/director Greg McLean shouldn't quit his day job. I have half a mind to write a nasty letter to the Australian Tourist Bureau: not to complain about the weird psychos running amok in the Outback, but how films like this get green-lighted! The only thing I'm grateful for is I didn't waste the money seeing this at the multiplex.

From the "straight to video" file, this lame stinker starts off with a somewhat promising set-up, but manages to slowly grind to a halt in no time at all. The amateurish screenplay and direction left this viewer wondering how do half-baked films like this ever get green-lighted? I won't bother trying to list all the holes in the plot, some of which were big enough to drive a Mack truck through, or all the moments where I felt like yelling at the screen "are you kidding me," as the story kept turning corners toward Crazytown. And I won't waste space trying to tie together all the lose threads of the plot, which made the story's resolution almost laughable. Suffice it to say that you're better off spending the 103 minutes organizing your sock drawer than watching this silly wanna-be "thriller." How sad to see a film squander talented folks like Gena Rowlands and Kiefer Sutherland in roles that might as well be cameo appearances. What a waste of their time and mine!

This was a big disappoint. Given its respectable showing at the Sundance Film Festival, I certainly expected a whole lot more than what this film delivered. The end result was so painfully frustrating and unsatisfying that I really can't recommend it. I won't even try to summarize the storyline since its evolution and resolution were so incredibly muddled. For those with M.I.T. graduate degrees in engineering or physics, this film will undoubtedly really turn you on with all its heavy techno babble. If you don't have a pocket protector or carry a slide rule wherever you go, than you'll likely find yourself looking at your watch wondering when the film's plot is going to get off the ground. The ideas presented by writer/director Shane Carruth's screenplay are certainly intriguing. The paradoxes of time travel as postulated by Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity should certainly make for a fascinating story. And while his editing and manipulative use of the film's time line were initially interesting, the overall delivery and conclusion of these elements ends up being so painfully weak and fraught with lose ends that the viewer is left with far too many unanswered questions. The two biggest questions for me were why and how. Why did I invest 77 minutes of my life with this unbearably confusing film and how do I get them back? I discovered a good clue to this film's many weaknesses in its closing credits. Not only did Mr. Carruth write and direct this turkey, but he also produced, edited, cast, wrote its original score, served as sound and production designer, co-cinematographer, and played its lead character! That must have been one tight, tiny budget. Clearly another set of eyes was needed to pull this jumbled mess together. I would have recommended a few film school graduates and fewer engineering students.