It's hard to review a movie like this without giving away any spoilers. The twist is too important to the outcome and quality of the movie. 'Static' revolves around a couple, seemingly living in the middle of nowhere, who have recently lost their son. The same night that the husband has completed his latest book a girl arrives on the couples doorstep asking for help from some masked men who are allegedly pursuing her. And so begins their night of terror.
For the next 70 odd minutes, we follow the couple in their attempts to escape the masked men, as we would always expect to do in this type of movie, however this time somethings different. Somethings not right. The masked men don't seem to be posing any real threat to the couple. They are unarmed and seem to show no real urgency when given an opportunity to capture/inflict harm on either member of the couple. At the time I was putting this down to poor filmmaking, however I would later learn it was to all make sense.
So the movie continues with the usual minor twists being revealed ie. the girl at the door is one of them, they've been watching the couple on surveillance all along etc. when something else begins to bug me. What is the point of the dead son storyline. Is it just more average filmmaking trying to add depth to the characters, as in 'Vacancy', or does the storyteller have a little trick up his sleeve to conquer all my doubts.
I was delighted to find it was the latter. The twist being that couple we were following all along were actually the ghosts who were struggling to move on, and the masked men (and woman) were the ghost busters, if you will. Not a completely original twist (I won't ruin any other films for you), but what I liked about it was that it didn't cheat. Not only in hindsight did it make sense (as much as a ghost story ever can), but it left clues along the way. When a mask is tried on by one member of the couple we see that these aren't gas masks as much as they are for lack of a better term 'ghostspotting' masks. There's also the above mentioned points about the masked intruders never motioning to cause harm to the couple, the male member of the couple's seemingly dead body seen with gunshot wounds in the opening frames of the movie and many more. But the one I like the most is actually the tagline for the movie, "If you hear them coming, you're already dead." There is was staring me in the face on the DVD cover before I'd even opened the case. Very clever.
Overall a very good film. I hope a lot of people don't turn it off halfway through out of frustration with what may appear to be poor writing and get through to the end when things are explained. Nothing life changing, but certainly a lot more fun to watch than a lot of these lesser known thriller/horrors are.
For the next 70 odd minutes, we follow the couple in their attempts to escape the masked men, as we would always expect to do in this type of movie, however this time somethings different. Somethings not right. The masked men don't seem to be posing any real threat to the couple. They are unarmed and seem to show no real urgency when given an opportunity to capture/inflict harm on either member of the couple. At the time I was putting this down to poor filmmaking, however I would later learn it was to all make sense.
So the movie continues with the usual minor twists being revealed ie. the girl at the door is one of them, they've been watching the couple on surveillance all along etc. when something else begins to bug me. What is the point of the dead son storyline. Is it just more average filmmaking trying to add depth to the characters, as in 'Vacancy', or does the storyteller have a little trick up his sleeve to conquer all my doubts.
I was delighted to find it was the latter. The twist being that couple we were following all along were actually the ghosts who were struggling to move on, and the masked men (and woman) were the ghost busters, if you will. Not a completely original twist (I won't ruin any other films for you), but what I liked about it was that it didn't cheat. Not only in hindsight did it make sense (as much as a ghost story ever can), but it left clues along the way. When a mask is tried on by one member of the couple we see that these aren't gas masks as much as they are for lack of a better term 'ghostspotting' masks. There's also the above mentioned points about the masked intruders never motioning to cause harm to the couple, the male member of the couple's seemingly dead body seen with gunshot wounds in the opening frames of the movie and many more. But the one I like the most is actually the tagline for the movie, "If you hear them coming, you're already dead." There is was staring me in the face on the DVD cover before I'd even opened the case. Very clever.
Overall a very good film. I hope a lot of people don't turn it off halfway through out of frustration with what may appear to be poor writing and get through to the end when things are explained. Nothing life changing, but certainly a lot more fun to watch than a lot of these lesser known thriller/horrors are.