The plot is really simple. Two people who had just met a couple weeks prior, Lucy (Alice Englert) and Tom (Iain De Caestecker) decide to go to a festival together. After leaving a nearby pub (the film takes place in Ireland), they are lead by a group of people to a hotel, but after they are left on their own, the signs that should be leading Lucy and Tom to the hotel simply lead them in circles. After a while, they have no idea where they are going. They are basically in a maze. At the same time, weird stuff starts happening. Lucy is convinced that she sees a man in a mask lurking around and stalking them in the nearby woods. Tom then tells her that something happened in the pub and Lucy is convinced that whatever happened in the pub, it has caused whoever this person is to come after them. However, Tom will simply not spill the beans for some odd reason. So as their driving, they hit the man Lucy has been seeing and he asks them for a ride. His name is Max (Allen Leech). It appears he's friendly but then he threatens to kill Lucy and it appears it has been him that's been doing all this stuff to them all along. Why? Well he says Tom spilled someone's drink in the pub. Does this really warrant torturing and killing him? I really don't think so, but whatever. By the way, we never find out if there's more to what happened. Tom never says exactly what happened in the pub and neither does Max. So what's the point of torturing Lucy and Tom? There is none!! :)))
As you can tell, I wasn't very happy with the story line. For the most part, it is bland and uninteresting. It pretty much involves Tom and Lucy fighting with each other over getting lost in the maze the whole time. That's about it. For the first 40 minutes of the movie, barely anything happens. After that, weird stuff finally starts happening but even these scenes weren't enough to draw me in. They were short and after they were over, we go back to the monotonous arguing that is a continuous occurrence between Tom and Lucy throughout the film. The only part of the film that was really high in tension was after they agree to give Max a ride and he attacks Lucy and threatens to kill her. he gives her ten seconds to choose whether he kills her or Tom. That was very suspenseful. And also, I will compliment the movie on making me jump a few times, but there was just nothing in between to keep me interested. I found myself falling asleep after a while. Plus, as I said before, we never find out why Max is after them really. We also never get any details as to what happened in the pub. I don't get why Tom had such a big problem telling Lucy what happened and it's bad because now we as the audience never find out. All we get to know is that he spilled someone's drink. Wow, what a son of a bitch!!! That's so worth following and torturing him for 6 hours over!
The movie itself was poorly scripted. There's no interesting dialogue to keep anyone interested. In fact, there's really not much dialogue other than when Tom and Lucy are arguing. We don't learn about the characters at all like we should through the script. Plus, Tom's character is an idiot. Now, I know that when people are in life-threatening situations they will certainly feel helpless and have no idea what to do, but Tom is truly the biggest idiot when it came to this one. He leaves Lucy alone in the car multiple times, argues with her over and over again about which way to go, and he takes forever to make decisions that should be really simple to make. When you are in a predicament that could mean the difference between life and death, you try to work together to figure a way out of it. Tom made this impossible. His character was poorly written and poorly scripted. And it's a shame because Caestecker actually did a nice job acting in the film. The idiocy of the character takes away from the great performance though. Besides that, Alice Englert and Allen Leech actually performed well too. Leech does a good job passing off Max as being insane and threatening. Englert made Lucy a likable character as well and I felt really bad that she was stuck in this maze with this idiot of a guy she just met. So the acting was one of the few positive things about this movie.
There is no depth to anything: the characters, the plot, the script, the motive, it is all shallow. We barely to get to know any of the characters and there is no character development whatsoever. Tom is naive the entire time and he never reveals any information that we'd like to know about the pub. Lucy was always likable, so no complaints there. Max is always a lunatic, so no complaints there. Tom was the one whose character should have changed but it never did.
There are a few positives about the movie: the tension and suspense do build at the end as Tom and Lucy try to get away from Max. After he threatens them in the car, which is by far the best part of the entire movie, he follows them in a truck and through the woods. I was actually a bit interested at that point. So good job there, but the payoff is just unsatisfying unfortunately. You'll see what I mean. The setting was well-done. It really looked and felt like a maze and the feeling of being isolated was there. Lighting was good for the most part; it is dark but flashlights make it easy to see what's going on. And the few jump scares that added thrill to the plot worked very well.
Overall, the few positive things i mentioned do not save this from being a lousy film overall. There simply must be more depth. That's really it. I wouldn't recommend watching this one but I wouldn't eliminate it from a possible viewing all together. What surprises me is how 86% of movie critics like this film. I think I will be listening to the other 14% that said this film wasn't good from now on.
BaD BiRdS: 2/5- BAD, BUT NOT HORRIBLE
~MJ Aufiero
No comments:
Post a Comment