Country of origin- UK
Year of release- 2015
Director- Mark Nuttall
Stars- Gil Darnell, Miriam Cooke, Lucas Hansen
However the film is let down by its low budget, which is sadly an inescapable problem this type of independent filmmaking has, although not overly used the poor quality CGI that is used dose take the viewer out of the film and leave them feeling a little disconnected from what’s happening on screen. Thankfully though when the CGI is used is doesn’t linger, and this allows the plot to run quite smoothly. The only other issue I had with the film was some of the acting wasn’t particularly good at times, although for the most part was either good, or decent, which is another pleasant departure from the carp that usually gets flung at low budget cinema fans.
The film follows the very war-weary Major
Fleischer and his small squad of battle hardened soldiers on their retreat from
the Eastern Front of 1944. Fleischer and his men are eventually
tasked with a secret mission to escort a female SS scientist into an ancient
and mysterious
Romanian forest behind the Soviet lines to retrieve some kind of powerful artefact
that has been requested by order of Himmler himself. Once in the heart of the forest
Fleischer realises that something is oh so very wrong, as his men begin to
vanish, and insanity begins to creep into the minds of those around him.
I went into this one not expecting a great deal to be honest,
so it came as some considerable surprise that this is actually a pretty damn solid
film. Firstly, Nigel Horne the films writer has actually written a pretty damn decant
plot and has managed to avoid writing the oh too familiar one dimensional characters
into that plot. I found both the story line and the majority of the characters
to be fairly engaging and actually well crafted, this is certainly something
that we do not see all that often in modern low budget horror cinema. To be
honest the characters in this film are the most interesting thing about it, very
rarely did feel as though I was being beaten over the head with stenotypes, and
that is very refreshing.
However the film is let down by its low budget, which is sadly an inescapable problem this type of independent filmmaking has, although not overly used the poor quality CGI that is used dose take the viewer out of the film and leave them feeling a little disconnected from what’s happening on screen. Thankfully though when the CGI is used is doesn’t linger, and this allows the plot to run quite smoothly. The only other issue I had with the film was some of the acting wasn’t particularly good at times, although for the most part was either good, or decent, which is another pleasant departure from the carp that usually gets flung at low budget cinema fans.
Overall this is good psychological horror thriller
that has a surprisingly decent war element. It may have its rough edges but I
can overlook some of them because of how constrained by budget the filmmakers were.
I think that with a larger budget this could have been a very good film if the
poor CGI was replaced with practical effects. I am going to give this one 6.5/10,
it’s well worth checking out.
to many films relay on cgi and that is the usual cause of a film being shitty.
ReplyDeleteVery true, but it's tolerable in this one.
DeleteWhat the heck is it with the tanks falling from the sky?
ReplyDelete