User Reviews

David (Jake Muxworthy) is biking through a beautiful and huge mountain range. He meets Angeline (Karina Testa) who is doing the same as him. They bike together but soon have two psychotic hunters chasing them. But there's someone chasing the hunters and them! It starts off pretty good. The cinematography is beautiful, the music unsettling and Muxworthy is very good in his role. Then, halfway through (40 minutes in), it slows down and becomes incredibly boring. Then, at the very end, it throws in a twist that was so stupid and old that I ended up hating the movie. Want to know what the "twist" was?

ENDING REVEALED IN THIS PARAGRAPH!!!! David was in combat in Iraq. He was injured by a bomb...and the whole movie was a dream he had while unconscious!!!! That is a cheat and just annoys people. That was totally inexcusable and ruins the movie. SPOILERS END

Also if you're looking for graphic gore forget it. You HEAR things happening but you never actually see it. No nudity or sex either. It is only 77 minutes and it IS well-made but that ending...I can only give it a 5.

OK lets see Shadow - saw this at Frightfest too = overall I found it OK

THERE ARE SOME SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW (PARTICULARLY IN PARA 3 ONWARDS) SO DON'T READ IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW.

"Future of Italian Horror"? - a tag like this floating around before I see the movie always makes me somewhat wary but the plot interested me and I wanted to see how it played out. Love Italian horror so a I'm a bit of a sucker for anything new.

It did seem a bit clichéd in the "man meets pretty girlie, man defends honour of girlie when red-necks (what nationality they were meant to be I still have no clue) bother her, man and girlie hit it off and bond over their shared passion of mountain-biking, man and girlie annoy the red necks they met earlier whilst red-necks are trying to slaughter cute woodland fauna resulting in the inevitable chase through the woods". Didn't really get all the camera-love of mountain biking until another reviewer mentioned it was a passion of the Director's and given that my idea of a fun time time certainly isn't mountain biking in the back end of nowhere I was a little bored with the plot at first. However the discovery of the red-necks snarling gun dog reduced to crispy critter status hiked my attention up to a new level.

Shadow has some very nicely shot creepily effective moments and that was largely down to the strange cadaverous character played by Nuot Arquint. The roasting of red-neck no 1 on the hotplate was very effective and the "peeling" when a brief escape attempt was stage was wince-making.

I was intrigued as to who the heck this tally, bald, skinny frog-licking torturer (Arquint) was and why (other than being a complete nut) he was doing this. The shots of his "lair" gave viewers some clues but was jarred a little by the almost cheap laugh (and it seemed to get a good laugh) of including a portrait of "Dubya" amongst all the other dictators. At this point I was really looking forward to seeing what head Zampaglione would bring this all to - and came down to earth with a real thud at the Jacobs Ladder-like finale - huh??

So kids what did we learn from this movie? 1) Future of Italian Horror - I hope not as I'll switch over to Spanish 2) War is BAD ... but has the interesting side effect of giving you a very vivid strange dream in which you find the Girlie of your Dreams who shares your Mountain Biking passion AND you get to rescue her from red-necks and a very strange frog-licking weirdo who hangs in the creepy woods. 3) Rock Star Directors like their soundtracks REALLY VERY LOUD

Overall a reasonable effort from Zampaglione for his first movie (except its let-down ending ....) atmospheric and well constructed. For me he's one to watch out for in the future.

Right up until a few minutes to the ending I was pretty happy with Shadow. This followed my favorite genre of someone getting abducted and having to find their way out, and the additional surprise abductions of the others also got me thinking this one was going to be nice and different from the usual.

Early on it was thrilling with the hunters' chase through the woods. When the odd things started happening I was wondering who was doing it, the missing girl? The guy? The other hunter? And when the abductees woke up and saw who had brought them there it was super-creepy, just the way I like.

This played out like a standard/good horror flick and for some reason my cable guide put it at two hours long, so when this ended at an hour and a half with that (unsatisfying) ending, I was really, really let down. I'll just say I never cared for those movies who lead you along, only to be ridiculous ending which negates everything you just saw.

I am very very very patient with horror movies, but this one was just unbearable. It is a big mess of ideas stolen from many films : a survivalist twist from Deliverance, the monster from Creep, a bit of torture porn from, well, anywhere. And, ho! a reference to our troubled times of wars and fears - which is just plain shocking because it exploits a real tragedy to pretend the film has a meaning. Add disposable actors, ridiculous hunters-with-big-trucks-and-dog, maybe haunted forest lost very far from civilization and you have a headache. The end doesn't explain anything, it just justify the lack of coherence and originality of the scenario.

That kind of films give to the horror genre its bad reputation!

I have recently watched this story and have now read the reviews. My take on the ending seems to have missed the point if the other reviewers are accurate.

I am reminded vaguely of a movie made many years ago with Timothy Bottoms and Donald Sutherland. Yes I had to look it up to get this right. It in my misty memory is a tale about a very seriously injured WW 1 soldier. We are here also treated to the many MENTAL visions with dialogue.

While I don't think that we as viewers were deliberately given real clues. The tale just goes along with our hero and the potential love interest having a bad time with the stereotypical bad and hard people.

The end tells me the THICKO that our story teller like in so many tales is either dead or in a seriously injured condidtion. In this case I feel that he like our man Joe in 'Johnny Got His Gun' mentioned earlier is living an unreal life due to memories imagined but we are privy at the end of the movie to a reality remembered as opposed to a reality created within an injured mind.

Dreams tend to have a staggered unrelated sequence of events.

The 'bad' tough men were his military colleagues, perhaps now dead, the operating theatre nurse his love interest the surgeons his torturers. I do not know about illegal drug affects but I was on legal serious medication for a few months post hospitalization and I remember having many seemingly realistic dreams. Some may call them out of body experiences.

With my feeling that this is what was being told then the poor acting seen by so many is irrelevant. I am being told probably an all too typical in this age of young men being sent for slaughter in a difficult to understand the reasons why conflict area. Waking up periodically in a situation they cannot recognise. For that reason alone I feel that the film story is a little better than middling.

I am not anti USA as such but at times it does take a lot to completely feel good towards them when certain combat reports are broadcast considering we in the UK are not only tarred with the same brush but have so many wishing to emulate perceived behaviour as in the movies. That was just to let anyone reading know that I have no political axe to grind. I served my own country for many many years both as military and latterly as part of the correction services.

I do hope my take on the intended storyline is accurate.

...no delivery. The potential was there for a good story, but it simply didn't happen.

This was really just the story of a hippie soldier with no fighting ability who meets the girl of his dreams while on leave from the war in Iraq. While there, he runs into two very stereotypical rednecks with Aussie accents, a rebel flag and guns galore. Mayhem ensues.

The acting ranged from mediocre to horrible. The story was so jam packed with naked liberal stereotypes it was almost amusing to watch. If this was supposed to be a comedy, it might have been worth up to five stars. But, it was nothing more than a smear job against the American military and George W. Bush. (you'll know what I mean when you watch the movie) If you're a cheerleader for liberalism, you'll probably enjoy this movie. Otherwise, save your time & money and avoid this unintelligent propaganda flick.

"Excellent movie!" so says "makevuoidame" who adds that he/she is "a big fan of horror movies". That person has only ever reviewed TWO movies on IMDb. Yes, it pays to be suspicious of maximum ratings when the overall IMDb score is below 6/10. Anyway, this film 'Shadow' is fairly good with a reasonable amount of action and suspense, plus it has two likable victims. I rated it 6/10, the most I felt possible, all aspects considered. Cinematography should have been a LOT better. It becomes rather nasty, violent and grisly after 35 minutes ! 6/10

A man gets out of the military and goes riding bike in the Alps (?). Along the way he meets a French woman and two hunters with British accents who have a rebel flag on the dash of their vehicle. They get into a scuffle with these hooligans who hunt them down in a battle of life and death on a mountain that has haunted legends. They end up captured by a strange guy who looks like he came straight from an 80's Metallica video. While the captor is isolated he has 8mm films from wars and prison camps throughout the 20th century, including Iraq, which in all honesty never made it to actual "film." The forest around the house has all kind of "Rambo" booby traps. Note the scene by the lake when the good guys are in a hurry to get away on their bikes, they take the extra time to put on their helmets. Safety first.

The movie has 6 people in it. No nudity. No sex. The gore is not extremely graphic as we have been used to. Don't pay too much for it.