ShimmySnail

Think of it as Attack the Block but with a militia instead of aliens, 28 Days Later with a militia instead of rage zombies, or perhaps The Purge but with a surprise attack instead of a violent holiday. The dialog and acting are good, action is scary and surprising, but what really sucked me in was that it appeared to be a single cut. I think perhaps there was some editing and cuts disguised as a brief darkening of the camera view, but essentially the entire movie played out like the raid halfway through the first season of True Detective. Considering the realist timeline, it's impressive that it even has a bit of character development between Lucy.(Brittany Snow) and Stupe (Dave Bautista).

I actually really enjoyed this. After seeing American Movie, which I loved, I was ready to laugh my way through this, but I was surprised. The writing is good, and it has a surprise ending. I was surprised, anyway. Yes, it's a local film, it's short, it's a B movie featuring a bunch of amateur actors, but if people are going to give summer blockbusters a pass just because they feature big names and have lots of action and whizbang special effects, yet their writing sucks and they use pre-existing franchises as a crutch, then I'm going to give independent movies a pass on the low budget and lesser experience of the actors. I enjoyed it. If Borchardt's next film is as good, I'll be very pleased.

I won't even bother telling you the premise. I'm sure you know it. What I will say is that this has extremely tight writing. The plot twists hold up. I can't think of a single plot hole, and I'm one of those people who obsessively tears apart films looking for those (I don't usually have to even try).

I have a mixed race family, and I say it's extremely relevant, politically, racially, in today's world. It's not an anti-white film, it's not calling all white people racist, or anyone racist, it's just probably using some dialog the writer/director has probably heard a million times in conversations with white people in high society.

It's not a horror movie as it's listed on IMDb and by most viewers. It has some horror elements, but it's really a suspense movie, and it's a very good one because for the first half of the movie or more, you have a growing sense of dread, and you have no idea why. To top it off, it has some very funny parts, but they don't ruin the suspense because the funny man is on the other end of a phone, the protagonist's only link to the outside world, as it were, and so it is compartmentalized and doesn't diminish the very real threat he is facing.