neener3707

Im an American. I was 10 when 9/11 happened so ive seen plenty of documentaries about it over the decades. So I was excited to see someone had made a proper 7/7 documentary. A terrorist attack that seems to have been largely forgotten as a result of more recent ISIS attacks in Europe with significantly higher casualties. But as you will see in the documentary, it goes deeper than just 4 Jihadists on 7/7 who blew themselves up, and id say, for the most part. They did a great job portraying it.

With footage most of us likely have never seen before, interviews with high ranking police, intelligence operatives, and the warmonger Tony Blair himself, we get an interesting comprehensive look at what happened. Though I personally would not have structured it the way it was, possibly due to the lack of footage (unlike 9/11), this is how the had to do it, and thats ok because it was compelling to watch the scenes unfold. However, while I watched on with interest into the subsequent forensics investigation and later-on failed attack and manhunt, I was displeased with something thats been creeping in to these documentaries as of late. The "poor me, Muslim pity party".

Right in the middle of sections discussing forensics, police investigations, internal discussions at MI-5. We get stopped, jarringly by "human rights activists" and other of that ilk. And they go on and on and on about how THEY were persecuted, not the 50+ people heinously murdered by true Muslims, BUT THEM, apparently 50+ dead isn't enough right? We have to be victims too. I was old enough to clearly remember 9/11, I remember the justifiable backlash against Muslims. When we have a plethora of dead people, I and very few other people want to hear about how its not real Islam, because it is, ive studied it, ive fought it. People complaining about being searched by police. Of course you are, when a white Catholic does the same, go ahead and search me. Get out of here with that nonsense and get back to the true crime investigation I came here for. Not a slew of people pretending that what happened isnt actually true textbook Islam justified by their "Holy" texts.

So while one can just skip through those stupid interviews, the rest is fantastic and another example of how Netflix still can produce good documentaries despite a lull in quality as of late, this one stands above most of the recent Netflix documentaries.

When I saw the trailer I thought "well that's an interesting enough concept" but its directed by who its directed by so I'll take it with a grain of salt. That was a good idea because while it starts off.... ok.... it quickly descends into mediocrity, and hubris, and just plain old fashioned bad movie making.

I never really cared for any of the characters. I think these filmmakers thought they were a lot more clever than they actually are. Which seems to be symptomatic in this mans movies. They go for a Dexter vibe of insane yet a good liar/family man but its just so off putting that even with suspension of disbelief, its still absurd. One look at this killer acting "normally" and he'd jump up high on the suspect list. But that isn't the problem, its effectively a Lifetime or Hallmark movie with sinister overtones of a profoundly deep "elevated" horror film. But its not, its not even a teen scream movie.

Just another failed attempt at trying to be clever. It wasn't clever, it was 30 minutes of intrigued and then a snooze fest of several "twists" that I (and likely everyone else) saw coming or didn't particularly care about. Just dont bother, the only way this man can continue making movies (obvious by this being an HBO Max movie) is if we keep watching them, so don't.

Wow where do I start? I'm sure the film asked that as well because nothing of interest happens for the first 29 minutes, and then takes another 20 to get started and pick up an semblance of pace. You've read it in all the other reviews so I'll gloss by it and say other things that need to be said. Walking. LOTS of walking. I get the point of the film. Ever wonder what Jason was doing while the "plot" was happening and the characters are running around panicked? Well the answer to that is obvious, and it is super boring and does not translate to the screen well enough to keep most people satisfied. Just a lot of arthouse "oh look a cool tree or abandoned car" shots of walking and unbelievably long sequences of Tarkovsky-esque walking through the woods shots. It was a fun idea but ultimately hindered what could have been a very cool film. There are plenty of other films that did the "slasher film from the perspective of the killer" idea much better.

Can we talk more about that acting? Holy mother of exposition and bad acting Batman what was that? People don't talk like that to each other, people don't act like that at all let alone right before they get murdered by a giant weapon wielding crazy person. I understand this is a slasher film so I know the rebuttal, we expect more often than not face fulls of cheese as far as acting is concerned but this is not that. In the 70's and 80's we look back at with an endearing lens, in the 90's and 2000's it was either just part of the schtick or an homage. But this is just a masterclass of what we call, "my friends from high school made a movie together" bad acting.

Can we also talk about the sound mixing? What was that? This distortion for distance that is so unbearably wrong. How loud some scenes are compared to others. How there are verifiable hard cuts in which a certain amount of time has passed yet the conversation happening has not changed in distance or at all, its just still happening in the background as if they're voices in my head. I just hated it, I dont know anything about sound mixing but as a viewer all I know is what I was seeing did not match what I was hearing and its jarring and takes away from what should be seamless editing.

The only saving grace of this movie in my opinion is its gore and its kills. Glorious... just amazing. The first one? Eh.... not so much but once that gal doing yoga gets it, I almost wanted to start clapping even though I was by myself. I can imagine that was the only time in the theaters the crowd was at all interested, some people were probably jarred awake or shaken awake by their one conscious friend to see the kill after they had fallen asleep in other sections. The ending? Well I don't want to spoil anything, but it was not good, just take my word and turn it off when someone puts a necklace on a gas can and runs off.

My final verdict? Fast forward to the kills and save yourself an hour of your life.