Alright, so I normally don't review movies I don't like since I don't like being an armchair critic if I don't think I could do it better.
This movie is one of those rare exceptions where I'm pretty sure I actually COULD do it better had I been given the same budget (was there even much of one? Sure didn't seem like it) and some major rewrites to the script.
So let's talk about the good, first of all:
-The idea was pretty decent on paper. A zombie-like movie where people were thrown into overdrive on killer hate in a similar vein of Mom and Dad (but instead of reversed paternal instincts, it just really revved up anger in ANYONE infected), and aliens were involved in it. Okay, that's not the most original idea, but if done properly I can roll with it.
Alright, now let's talk about the bad.
First off, I say this is a movie, but it's more like 2 as another reviewer mentioned. The first movie is about couples who bicker and argue and are generally all unlikeable in their own ways despite the movie trying to push us to care about even one of the characters.
Then part way through the other movie invades, and it becomes a zombie survival movie. Naturally as you'd expect in a horror survival movie, all of these generally unlikeable characters do a personality 180 and become REALLY unlikeable...whether it's because they become such cowards despite talking a big game earlier, crapping on the characters wanting to do stuff because of what would be considered petty reasons at that point, that kind of stuff.
Speaking of unlikeable things, there's the two...I guess for lack of a better word we'll call them leads despite the movie trying to make it a team effort. You have the guy who the girl suspects has cheated on her (man, can we come up with something original for couples arguing?) so they have a big loud blowout in the car over it with him frustratingly saying he'll move out first thing.
Then they go to a party together to celebrate one of the other couples moving, where the girl tells all her girlfriends about what happened and why (despite it being suspicious but not confirmed), and naturally like cliche girlfriends (and the one guy), they tell her how the guy is generally trash and how she's better off. But if that's not enough, ONE of the girls right at the table makes a remark about it right then and there WHILE THE GUY IS SITTING THERE, which of course leads to yet another blowup.
And that's not the best part. Throughout the entire movie you see the guy trying to make amends because of COURSE the movie is going to follow another cliche of making the absolutely toxic couple be the ones the want us to care about. Yeah, forget the other two couples which had more petty reasoning for their tenseness for each other, but let's try to focus on mending the couple who has already shown twice to be incredibly toxic when they're together.
Then of course, remember how I said the premise sounded pretty neat at a glance? Well, unfortunately it doesn't improve from that. Here's some gripes that I have:
*At one point when Doctor Shane breaks into their house, it's made out to sound like this was just a new weapon being worked on, beyond the capabilities of the regular type of biological warfare.
*At another point when we finally leave the house, we see a flying saucer in place of where the moon would be, implying aliens were going to come into play at some point.
Not only are these a bit conflicting ideas, but neither get explored. Why do they never get explored? Because 3/4ths of the movie is spent in the house with the characters talking to each other. Yes, you read that right: A movie where the premise is some pseudo-alien virus that turns people into raging zombie types of versions of themselves spends almost all of its time focusing on the characters standing/sitting and talking, even during the shift to the zombie part.
On top of that, the zombie bit isn't that greatly executed. For a virus that's supposed to highly heighten our negative angry emotions, where does the zombie aspect of eating people come into this? Why is it some of the people don't talk and only mumble/make sounds, but then you have two that can form perfect sentences and are even capable of taunting other characters (example being the "lead"-guy in the end taunting the "lead"-girl with how he cheated on her and saying how it was going to only ALMOST feel less great than killing her).
So which was it? Are the people zombies in a typical zombie fashion of just wanting to kill and consume? Or are they more like, again, the people in Mom and Dad to where they're just crazier/more kill prone versions of themselves?
But in all honesty, let's talk about the biggest offender of this movie: The sound quality.
Alright, so I'm not a sound expert, but first of all: FIX THE SMOKE ALARM. Seriously, I don't know if that was intentional to keep it beeping throughout the movie, but goodness was it annoying (although it'd probably be explained away as some "deeper metaphorical thing to symbolize the ideas the movie was trying to convey").
On top of that, volume control was a huge problem, as was overall audio quality. At points you had characters talking way too quietly to hear without turning up the volume, only to have to immediately turn it back down because someone was screaming/yelling at such a high amount that it would always produce that annoying sound with it that you'd hear when someone shouted directly at a microphone. You'd also have characters that were supposed to be farther away, but their voice was as if they were right next to the microphone to where at one point when it focused on another character and someone else talked that closely, I legit thought to myself "What, they gave the camera-man a part?"
Finally, the acting was pretty offputting. It came off as community-college level, especially the cop who I found myself shouting "EMOTE!" at the TV because he would tell these stories with such a disinterest that he came off as incredibly bored both expression wise as well as tonally. Some actors ranged from super quiet to super screechy as if they had no other notes in between, the "leads" were not the greatest...I actually can't really think of one actor/actress that stood out to me at all.
Overall, this movie was a mess. Sound wise, acting wise, direction wise, story wise, it was all just a mess that sadly actually HAD potential in the premise had it been handled better.
Had they cut down severely on the one-location talk time and focused a bit more on the virus, got their story straight on where it came from, and ran with that a bit...then it could have at the very least been decent...or heck, even so bad it's good had they gone balls to the walls with the insanity of the idea and relished in the possible cheesiness of it.
But as it stands, it was neither decent, nor so bad it was good. It was simple just...bad.
Edit: Also, the kicker? This movie was supposedly shot in the course of 5 days...and it definitely shows.
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