Recovery (VI) (2016) User Reviews

You'll Spend Most Of The Movie Waiting For Something To Happen

[HorrorOverEverything · 3/10 · 29 October 2016]

Four teenagers (some of the oldest teenagers in the world) venture into the inner city for a night of fun at a sketchy night club, after one of them goes missing the rest of the group goes looking for their missing friend by using the "Find My phone" app to pin point her whereabouts. Obviously things go wrong and they end up going to a house belonging to psychopaths. It's a very generic set up for a very generic low budget horror movie.

So yeah this movie is pretty bad but it isn't just a bad movie, it is also kind of odd as well (not in a good way). The way the characters act is just so off and unrealistic, and it's not the usual kind of dumb things you see in horror movies that are used to further the story or set up a kill, it's just a lot of random actions done by the characters that don't really have anything to do with the story and have no purpose at all. The actors reactions to things were strange as well, it almost felt like some characters were taken out of a Disney sitcom and transferred them into a Horror Movie.

The whole pacing of the film was pretty awful as well, it takes about fifty five minutes for anything to really happen, and even then it's just twenty minutes of the main characters running around the house trying to avoid the killers. There are some kills but none of them are anything special, very basic effects and a relatively small amount of gore. As the movie neared it's end I started getting anxious for it to be over because it was just so stale and boring.

I knew not to expect much when I decided to watch this movie, however I was still disappointed, it's just another cliché ridden horror movie and we didn't even get a high body count or a bloodbath.

Great start but the rest is junk

[causednomad · 3/10 · 1 December 2016]

After the first few minutes (right until the opening credits), I actually called my wife to "come and not miss this one because it seems great". Fortunately for her, she did not have time.

The build up with the annoying and extremely shallow teenage characters is just too long and it is almost impossible to empathize with any of them. So you will be indifferent (if not happy), when they are being murdered. That is if you can follow the scenes and figure out who is hitting whom with what.

In conclusion, all you will find in this one is poor writing and poor direction. I would not recommend this to anyone at all. 3 stars just for the opening sequence.

Excellent start, ridiculous drift into the meaningless

[marcwiechmann · 3/10 · 25 January 2017]

Oh man, I wanted to like this movie, I wanted it so much. The beginning was really, really promising. I got immediately interested in the characters and really wanted to know, what's going here. The actress of "Kim" is smoking hot, the actor of the "father" was really good, and I liked the nice little Sepia look of the start.

Too bad for me, because what is going on, will never be explained to any of us.

After very good two minutes (really, a dream start for every movie), this movie got cheesy, superficial and meaningless, not to say boring. The formula was visible at all times. There were some moments when I still hoped the movie will get back on line, but well, what can I say - you see my 3 star rating.

You see the pretty boy - you know he will die. This is not even a spoiler, it's just maths. You meet the pretty girl and know immediately something cannot be right. You see the smart ass brother and know he will survive. You see the house and have to wonder, why anyone should freely walk in there - or stay there, after finding the first strange and disturbing things.

But noooooo....

The main character was terribly annoying and way to "superior". Always cool, never panicking, seeing horrible stuff and still making jokes, tricking the bad guy with psychic manipulation within 20 seconds, and of course fighting like a trained MMA fighter. Absolutely with a funny oneliner on her lips in life endangering situations.

Ridiculous.

What did the family want? Why did they do, what they do? The most interesting and important part of the movie, but nothing gets explained or even shown. We just know okay, they do what they do. Why? Who cares, am I right? Basically the villains get 10 minutes screen time.

Until half of the movie I was still hoping something would happen. Once it passed the 45 minute mark I knew the 2nd half will be awful. And sadly I was right.

The ending was like the biggest letdown ever. It was illogical, it was stupid, and worst, it closed the circle to the beginning - from which we still don't know any meaning at all. So you are left with a really low movie, with horrible dialogues, mostly bad acting besides one or two exceptions ("father", "kim", "mother") and a terrible plot, where basically nothing happens.

This is also no horror movie, in the best case this is a thriller.

And not a good on.

Skip it.

A lot of potential, but so hard to sit through

[savannahlynnhill · 2/10 · 18 January 2017]

I liked the opening scene. It had a lot of potential and the plot summary had me hooked. Still, I didn't expect anything great, but it was released in 2016 so I figured it would at least be a B-movie quality. I've seen better produced movies on the Lifetime channel. The actors were so awful. They bumbled around and had really strange reactions to things. The plot didn't flow at all, any tension that could have been built was thrown away by extremely amateur actors and dialogue. The action made no sense and the actors just kind of awkwardly played around with each other during "fight" scenes. Very poorly edited and ridiculous script. The most clumsy and incompetent movie I've seen in a very long time.

Oh you don't have a Snapchat?!

[TerribleKatherine · 2/10 · 19 January 2018]

Already the way the movie started, annoyed me a lot. I am fed up with social media bs, and when I realized this movie is going to include A LOT of it, like talking about it, using it, taking idiotic pictures etc. and rambling on how "my phone has so much dirt on me" (learn to behave like a decent human being, how about that?) not to mention making a big deal about someone not having Snapchat, I felt like watching this was a mistake. Also, movies with hipster-wannabe-but-still-generic-as-f*uck-teenagers, whose priority in life is pretty much their phone, tend to piss me off too. (Watched "It Follows" one time and got a massive headache..) So, wasn't expecting much. I was actually rooting for the bad guys, because they weren't that annoying. So, when the movie ended like it did, I was glad and decided to give an extra point. So 2/10 it is.

Why was this ever made?

[davidlundgren-80247 · 1/10 · 30 October 2016]

Im just writing this as a warning to other viewers out there do not waste your time on this incredible piece of space waste. From the start the story line fails to be convincing and it just gets thinner as the movie stumbles forward. Sigh, the lousy generic inexpressive electronic dance music complete works as a great soundtrack to this preposterously boring movie. I'm glad i did not watch it sober anyway...when my girlfriend who had fallen asleep during this torture asked me how it ended when i woke up, my kind of good mood flew out the window, because i actually had forgotten about the whole 82 minutes and it just came back to me, the incredibly dumb and unrealistic ways the actors reacts to stuff happening in the movie, the lousy music, the boring setting, the missing logic everywhere. The actors should as soon as possible (if they have not already) quit their jobs and go beg to flip burgers or whatever. This was a catastrophe. face palm. Sigh. Please dear production company, don't make more movies, get a new start in your lives, start a cleaning company or something useful. Cause you actually don't know how to entertain, Have you ever watched movies at all? do you guys know what plots, storytelling, acting and logic means? Im so furious that people like you actually has enough time and money to fart out this nonsense, that is so damn hard to cope with...and the facts that you don't have an all awful review just breaks my heart and i have lost my faith in humanity decades ago but this is the dot over the i.

Mindless indie horror

[Leofwine_draca · 1/10 · 25 May 2017]

RECOVERY is a mindless indie horror film with zero redeeming qualities. This utter junk is about one of those 'find my phone' applications that you can get on a smartphone and sees it being used for nefarious purposes as it leads to a literal death house. This tame 'house of horrors' outing is a real dud and completely lifeless from beginning to end. The only surprise is that this was put out by Orion - the same Orion who released the wonderful ROBOCOP back in the day. For shame.

Not a good one

[KiloOne · 3/10 · 6 January 2017]

Cliché as hell (but that's not really the problem, the story and beginning was OK to be set for a good disposable title.)... nothing new, bad scripting people that know how to scrip don't make the victim characters knock-out the enemies and have them walking away after which is what literally happens 2-3 times... after you down someone who's trying to kill you, bash their head with whatever you can find so they don't get up later and freaking kill you!(or at least bind them) besides that the mom character and Ed's girlfriend are pretty useless in the movie very bad usage of them, Miles was the typical ''funny'' guy and it works for the most part but later when things get rough he turns to be very dumb and his sister ends up being bad-ass she clearly one-shots Ed but for some reason when the movie could have just ended and it would've been kind of an OK disposable movie but the guy who was supposedly dead shows up and ruins everything. And what about the dad and his gear ? he's clearly not a doctor to live in that ***thole.

The good things i find in this movie are the humour with the new age of internet it's enjoyable,Eds visual and his room and the first half of the movie that does a good job keeping you entertained with corny jokes and typical teen things, but again it falls when hell breaks loose on your protagonists and you start to notice many script/screenplay flaws.

Directors have to stop making crappy movies like this with many plot holes and flaws this isn't the beginning of slasher/terror films like F13th or Halloween where people accept it because they're classics , don't get me wrong here but i love bad slasher movies and this was OK for me but anyone who's not like me and has a critical nature will have wasted their time ... i don't know how many bad movies of this genre i watched that have the same flaws and plot-holes like it's copying corny aspects of classics from 30 years ago, you can still make movies like this but without having clear holes/flaws that could have easily been taken out with a review, ''You're next'' is a clear example of that.

A serviceable entry in suburban horror

[misterdarwin24 · 6/10 · 16 November 2016]

NOTE: I was given a screener copy of this film for the Dark Discussions Podcast.

Reverse home invasion films seem to be a thing this year. Films like Intruders and Don't Breathe tell tales of people breaking into the homes only to find something horrible waiting for them. I am sure there is something significant in that.

Unlike those other films, in which our protagonists are criminals trapped by bigger threats, Jess (Kirby Bliss Blanton), Logan (James Landry Hebert) and Miles (Alex Shaffer) are relative innocents drawn into a spider's web spun by the suburban equivalent of TCM's sawyer family.

How effective you find the film will likely depend on how much empathy you have for the teenage characters (Jess is about to graduate High School), who mostly act like teenage characters; in search of a good time, they lie to their parents, experiment with drugs, cheat on each other, and spend too much time on their phones. It is telling that the characters spend much of the film looking for Jess's phone, with little concern over the fate of their new friend Kim, who vanished along with it. Still, in a genre that is still grappling with how to deal with new technology in old tropes, using the phone as bait to draw in victims is inspired.

The film is a slow burn - though only 82 minutes long, more than half of that is spent leading up to the confrontation between Jess's friends and their would-be abductors. Once they arrive at the death trap that is the antagonist's home, there is still much Scooby Doo style investigation that takes place before Daddy gets home. Much of the action in the house is confusing, and I never got a handle on it's layout, but I suspect that was the director's intent.

Once the action does take place, I found the violence to be more authentic than stylish, with a few moments of good practical gore, and I rather liked the Phantom of the Opera tension between Jess and Edward.

Corny

[pamala-75207 · 1/10 · 6 November 2016]

Not the greatest directing so that made the acting not so great and the dialogue was awful, the ending summed up my feelings after watching the movie which was really, that's just stupid. This is the type of movie you watch with a group of like minded people and basically you talk the the entire movie about how bad it is, it's not even B movie bad or a cult movie bad, it's just bad. And the actors looked to close in age to be the parents of the so called high school students they almost looked the same age. I still don't get the "we can't get out of the house" smh or the make sure the person that is trying to kill you is either dead or they can't walk etc,and take a weapon and oh yeah the keys so you can unlock the doors and get out of the extremely raggedy house you are in

We are family

[nogodnomasters · 6/10 · 12 September 2017]

The film opens with a teaser of a girl locked in a wooden box meeting her surmise.

Jessie (Kirby Bliss Blanton) discovers her boyfriend (Markos Zepeda) is cheating on her. She meets Kim (Rachel DiPillo) as they hit it off and she becomes her new BFF. They opt to go dancing and drag along Jessie's brother Miles (Alex Shaffer) and her new first choice for a boyfriend Logan Barlow (Samuel Larsen). Kim hurriedly leaves the dance as I discover an unadvertised use for a smartphone. Kim gets Jessie's phone in a mix-up. Miles is a techno-weenie and they track the phone with a recovery app (see title). Jessie needs the phone because it has "more dirt on me than anything I know." They end up at the house where we saw the opening teaser where I still have trouble believing a house where people can constantly sneak around unnoticed.

This is another capture, fight, and chain film. If you are young and can identify with the on-line social networking and with Jessie, this should make for a great film. For the rest of us, maybe 3 stars. Some humor mixed into the dialogue to keep it from getting dry.

Guide: F-word. No sex or nudity. High School drinking.

Stupid movie

[ladybug-28652 · 1/10 · 16 December 2016]

Don't waste your time watching this. There was absolutely no ending to the movie. They want ten lines in order to post this, but the movie was so stupid and boring that I don't have ten lines to even give. So what to do what to do except to repeat myself , save yourself that time it will absolutely be time you can not get back so move on and watch some thing else. This movie is bad and stupid , this movie is bad and stupid. Just trying to get to the stupid 10 line minimum . I have eight only two more lines to write so I can submit this. Don't waste your time watching this movie. Trust me you will thank me. Even this ten line minimum is stupid , it sure is time I will never get back

Flesh and blood...well, more like very little flesh and really quite bloodless

[TheLittleSongbird · 3/10 · 31 May 2018]

'Recovery' drew me into seeing it, with a cool poster/cover, an intriguing and quite creative premise and as someone with a general appreciation for horror. That it was low-budget, which from frequent personal experience is rarely a good sign due to that there are so many poor ones out there, made me though apprehensive.

It is sadly however yet another film seen recently, hence some reiteration because the exact same strengths and flaws are here present in those films, that to me was incredibly disappointing considering its potential which it doesn't do anywhere near enough with. 'Recovery' is very weak, with a plethora of problems (fairly big ones too) and doesn't do enough with its potential, which was hardly small. There are however a couple of decent, even good, qualities in 'Recovery'.

Lets start with the positives. The scenery is atmospheric and spooky, despite the rather direct to video schlocky way it's shot and edited, it was very clear that the film was made in a rush with no care or enthusiasm.

Best thing about 'Recovery' is the opening, which was attention grabbing and kept me hooked. Which is why it is such a shame that 'Recovery' went downhill so drastically.

Going on further to the negatives, the story does feel over-stretched and some of it feels vague, under-explained in the last third where the film especially became duller, more predictable, more senseless and less scary. Too many characters are too sketchy and with nowhere near enough to make one want to endear to them. Their irritating and illogical decision making and behaviours frustrates.

Making the film feel bland and forgettable with not enough heart put into it. The effects are ropy at best, the sound quality is obvious and utilised cheaply (being too loud in the build ups and people's reactions) and it's best not mentioning the lumbering acting.

Dialogue can be stilted and rambling while the pace goes to a standstill after the promising opening and drags on forever, never recovering. The second half is interminable. Found too many the supposedly shocking moments not surprising or scary and the supposedly creepy atmosphere dreary, due to the excessive obviousness and the lack of tension and suspense.

A lot of 'Recovery' has underdeveloped plot elements and often nonsensical and confusing character motivations, while too many of the things to make you jump or shocked are far from creative or scary and are pretty tame. The ending makes the film finish on an incomplete and confused whimper.

There is not enough threat here and what there is of it tends to be used poorly, while the psychological elements are unimaginative and are more odd than scary, completely failing to show the horror of the subject. Some badly sagging momentum too. The direction is pretty leaden, got the sense their heart was not in it, and the music doesn't really fit.

Concluding, very weak. 3/10 Bethany Cox

Could use some more gore

[deloudelouvain · 5/10 · 6 February 2017]

I read the reviews on here and honestly the movie isn't as bad as they want to make you believe. It's for sure not the greatest thriller horror ever but also not the worst. It's mostly the last fifteen minutes that aren't that great. And also the dialogues aren't that great either. I think it could have used a bit more gore. But nonetheless there are a couple moments of suspense. The beginning isn't bad either. The cast is what you expect to be with this kind of movies, not the greatest but at least they gave it a shot. I would just have made the last part of the movie differently. But unlike other movies, with this one I don't really regret watching it. I won't watch it a second time though.

Director needs a new hobby.

[tharris-51242 · 2/10 · 14 February 2019]

First we had Scream. And then more Scream movies. And then movies like Saw franchise upped the game.

This movie is nowhere near either. Basically takes until the final credits to build up, and the description of the movie is far from accurate. I suppose if I got high, it might make more sense.

From the very flat acting, where character depth was not drawn upon. The plot is flimsy at best. There is more suspense in one of Donald Trumps tweets. The hypersexual teenager that tries to pass with a sweet innocence, the acting is that terrible that it makes the Kardashians Oscar worthy. The pathetic use of technology that was used to prop up the whole film, that for a film in 2016 did not seem authentic. And I guess that's the issue with this film. There is no authenticity.

In the horror franchise, the viewer expects a bit of gore. The viewer expects twists, a shock, a jump in the seat and the electric tingle as the protagonist gets what's coming. Jigsaw did this well. This film, well, did not.

If this is collecting dust at the bottom of the 10 for $1 DVD bin, let it be.

You had a good ending and then took it one step too far

[b1airwilliams · 4/10 · 5 July 2020]

Small spoiler*

I actually thought the movie was really suspenseful. My heart was beating really fast the whole time, not sure what to expect next. Yes, there were obvious clues as to the last family member- definitely called that right away- and I will even give the movie the fact that they didn't call the police to help retrieve the phone, since it's realistic that someone would go home with a stranger from a club. I give special props for killing off a main character/love interest.

It was definitely a solid movie with all of this, and then after the funny joke about still not finding the phone the movie should have ended, but instead you want to ruin the entire thing by saying that it's not over and the guy who was obviously killed was in fact still alive and managed to not only knock out the survivors by himself but also imprison everyone else.

The quality movie was ruined because the writers took it one step too far with the ending so that it wasn't actually over and could even have a second movie. Awful thing to do.

LOL, ok that was just stupid

[BladeRunner2049 · 5/10 · 1 November 2019]

But well done as far as production. I guess you just gotta run with it. Pretty good acting. Pretty unbelievable storyline. It's worth watching for a laugh.

A disturbing horror-thriller, brought low by excess content

[I_Ailurophile · 6/10 · 17 September 2022]

The opening scene portends deeply disturbing notions by way of nasty, misogynist themes and violence. Thereafter the pacing is terribly slow - if we apply the model of conventional narrative structure, the "rising action" is mostly a flat plateau barely distinguishable from the "exposition," and more than half the runtime has eclipsed before it truly feels like the promised "horror-thriller" content is again showing up. This is rather troubling, but in addition: Is it just me? Did I have an abnormally unremarkable experience growing up in western Pennsylvania? Or are early scenes wholly unbelievable as the chief characters - high school students - drink alcohol and do drugs at massive parties, go out to clubs, apparently put all their personal information on social media, hang out with total strangers that they've only just met (online no less), and more?

In fairness, once the narrative does very belatedly pick up, 'Recovery' is duly engaging and executed pretty well. The cast is solid, the production design and art direction are splendid, and even lighting is employed notably well. I very much enjoy Giona Ostinelli's robust original music that lends strongly to the mood of any given scene. Director Darrell Wheat illustrates fine capability, especially in the latter half, and there are swell if grisly ideas in his story and the screenplay written with Kyle Arrington. The blood and gore look great, and the brutal violence, and I appreciate the hair and makeup work generally. Truthfully, at its best this is really well done, and I appreciate the obvious hard work that everyone put into it.

Would that the feature were a bit more mindful and balanced from the get-go. Half the runtime, about 40 minutes total, could probably be chopped up into only half its length without losing any substance. The excellence in the second half actually makes up a bit of ground for the weak start - a surprising "recovery," if you will. But the fact that there's anything to compensate for in the first place is an issue. When all is said and done this isn't half bad, and deserves a soft recommendation on account of its strengths. Bear in mind very necessary content warnings for not just significant violence, and specifically violence against women and associated themes that are all too real. Provided you don't mind when your horror-thriller entertainment is distinctly less than perfect, you could do a lot worse than 2016's 'Recovery.'

It's not that bad

[funnycommentor · 6/10 · 8 December 2021]

The plot of the movie was interesting but kinda basic the same time. Actually, that movie was about the dangers of technology. The characters were basic stupid teens. The storyline was just ok. The kills were nice. The location was so creepy. The plot twists were unpredictable but not so good. Anyway, it's not a bad movie, it's watchable. But, probably only once.. In my opinion, sometimes their decisions were so stupid, that probably some of them deserved to die.