Horror/Thriller – 2013 – 102 Minutes
It’s very difficult to review this movie. One of the reasons that I enjoyed it so much is that I had absolutely no background on it; no expectations at all. All I saw was that Sharlto Copley [IMDB] was in it, and assumed – playing the odds – that it would be great. As it unfolded I was completely in the dark and it vastly improved the experience. You should go watch it now, before learning anything else. I’ll wait.
See, wasn’t that pretty great?
The movie opens with Copley unconscious and in a open pit full of corpses. He can’t remember who he was, or how he got there. After being helped out of the pit by an anonymous stranger he finds a nearby house with several others and discovers that the amnesia seems to be universal. Mistrust is thick as people begin to make and trust their assumptions. What’s going on? Why is there a pit of corpses on their lawn? Who’s to blame (and wouldn’t it seem like the guy in the pit might have deserved to be there)?
The acting is excellent across the board and the script maintains suspense perfectly. It doles out nuggets of inscrutable information that increase interest, but fail to clarify events. The atmosphere is finely tuned to highlight the relatively few, but very well done, scares. Unfortunately the movie does get a little scattered as it winds down. It’s impossible to clarify without spoilers, but you may, as I did, get the impression that there were two competing concepts and neither was able to win completely.
The ending may be muddled, but getting there is a hell of a ride. Copley continues his streak of picking, smart, interesting scripts and making the most of them. As I started with, the movie absolutely benefits from ignorance. Don’t both learning anything more about it, just find it and enjoy.
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