Proximity (II) (2020) User Reviews

Why Film Editing is So Important

[ld-03073 · 5/10 · 9 July 2020]

This movie literally has everything, and that is the problem. I have never seen a movie where 50% is honestly good and the other 50% is film-school horrible.

Overall the acting, special effects, and idea of the movie are good. But, the plot, pacing, and "black-ops government scenes" are so dumb (and out of place) they're comical. I have never edited film in my whole life, but I guarantee I can turn this stinker into a decent story with 30 minutes in the editing room.

This movie has it all! Including (in no particular order): -Alien Abductions -Main Character who is "finding himself" -A train "chase" scene -Cyborgs on motorcycles -A lot of 1990's technology in 2020??? -Social Media bullying -Cable News -A 5,000 mile non-stop Cessna flight from Costa Rica to Canada (Impossible) -Breaking out of Prison -oh, and Jesus (yes, Jesus Christ)

Soundtrack

[markhappyboy · 5/10 · 15 May 2020]

What's going on with the soundtrack in this movie! It's absolutely terrible, like watching a movie with someone in the same room as you playing a cd , or watching a movie from 1940 with the volume turned up way to loud while you try to listen to the dialogue! And music playing completely inappropriate to the scene on screen , it's a shame it completely destroyed any chance of liking this movie .

From Costa Rica to British Columbia?? On that plane?!?!?

[rodarena · 4/10 · 19 July 2020]

I just can't stand when simple facts are ignored by the writers. How many Kms they had to do in that Cessna from Costa Rica to British Columbia?!? Come on!! My score went down just for this abuse of our intelligence.

Utter nonsense

[nigepitz · 1/10 · 30 May 2020]

So it's present day, our guy works at JPL and is a geek neither he, or anybody else has a smart phone and people exchange numbers by writing them down. A guy who says he writes a blog, gives a business card that has no email address or URL . People go on line but don't exhibit any normal behaviour of modern kids. It's still bearable until the men in black and the stormtroopers arrive and then it descends into a zero budget student movie with an unapologetic hijacking of science by religious twaddle.

Decent start, ridiculous deterioration of quality. Awful soundtrack

[timdneville · 3/10 · 22 August 2020]

I finally signed up to IMDB just to review this.

This movie is just weird. It started with great potential with a creepy encounter. Usual movie of no one believing what happened but then it just got weird. It almost morphed into a bad b-rate Disney style sci-fi film with human cyborg type things. It also felt like it tried becoming some bad coming of age drama at times. And good lord, the music!!

Also, what time period is this!? It's like a mix of year 2000 technology with 2020. Old chunky Nokia phones and tv with new smart phones and laptops.

The soundtrack is just stupid. None of the music goes with any of the scenes!

I just can't get how something could start with so much potential then just seem like they all gave up. Even the boom mic makes an appearance in one jungle scene

They manage to make a little propeller plane fly from Costa Rica to Canada whilst being chased by the Cyborg space police Force on bikes. I mean come on!! Thank goodness they had masks that the cyborgs can't read 😂

So much awful camera panning and slow motion scenes that are just not needed. And I have to mention the soundtrack again. Nuts.

And the ending? Jesus Christ!

Curious aliens

[kuryu-15318 · 15 May 2020]

Just a few words to tell you what to expect if you're thinking about giving this a try. The acting is good, the effects are well done and believable and the story, for the most part, is interesting and scientifically accurate. The point of the nearly two hours becomes clear at the end and, for me, destroys the movie: Aliens have been interested in humans for centuries because they want to learn more about Jesus. Hope this helps you decide.

I thought it was good, but then suddenly it wasn't

[Phreakout · 3/10 · 15 May 2020]

Spoilers.... I really enjoyed this movie. The acting was nice, the effecs was good, and I really liked the pacing. The space, science and tech was also very accurate and I could see they put in a lot of effort.

But then... one scene made this - two hour movie - into a religious propaganda movie. The music drastically changed, from a darker synth wipe, to an upbeat christian theme, and all of the sudden, the aliens was looking for Jesus. And that's a very efficient way, to totally destroy a good movie.

PROXIMITY

[jricos · 7/10 · 17 February 2022]

This film has it's pros and it's cons like every film, it has a couple of minor issues, but still enjoyable nonetheless, if you're a sci-fi alien film lover, you'll like it for it's good things. There is a lot parts in this movie that were executed poorly and some that were executed well enough.

Pros:

• CGI is really good for a low budget film
• some scenes are powerful but one in particular stuck out to me.

• first half of the movie is really good, and some towards the end too.

• cool "Android" design (I also have a con about the androids)

Cons:

• the music choices do not blend with the film at all whatsoever
• the acting is not good in some scenes (not all thru out)
• a lot of the movie feels like a coming of age flick which doesn't work at all with this type of movie (some of that is due to the music choices)
• there is one cringe scene which is terrible.

• you can tell white "androids" are people in costume.

Aliens cross the galaxy to find jesus!! really!!!

[howlee-65895 · 1/10 · 15 May 2020]

Was going all right until the end and then we find its a religious propoganda movie the aliens have been searching for jesus all this time what a total let down a great way to spoil a movie and leave a nasty after taste

I enjoyed this movie

[ranger51262 · 6/10 · 4 March 2022]

Knowing right from the start it was a lower budget film, and not produced by some ungodly hollywood conglomerate it was pretty good. Though there are no big names in this movie and some upstarts including the actors and director, it was good enough to start a conversation with others about "What If"

Waste of time!!!

[norbertfleisig · 1/10 · 15 May 2020]

I was actually enjoying this movie and thought it was a cool little indie sci-fi film until it turned into religious nonsense. Very unfortunate, made the plot completely worthless with just one stupid scene.

Honestly, it's the escape I needed rn

[Ladyxinfinity · 8/10 · 16 May 2020]

There is something intriguing and lovable here. There are many clunky moments, found myself lol-ing, but as a whole it's very entertaining and leaves you feeling something good. It's different.

Good in the beginning but akward afterwards

[getuliohf · 7/10 · 28 September 2020]

This kind of matter, involving abductions and alien's contacts, are pretty known to everyone that likes it. This story has a good approach of what could happen to abducted people, and the trama is nice. However, this story has gaps that could be solved if the film was a little longer to give us some more information.

In the end, not so bad but not so good. It worth watching only once, just that.

An appalling conceit

[jasgeo · 1/10 · 16 May 2020]

The god botherers have had a damn good go at wrecking rock, country music which has often been subjected to monotheistic drivel was tolerable once the superstitious tried & failed to force others around to their point of view, but trying to exploit scifi, a medium which has always encouraged free thinking, to toe the xtian line in the way "Proximity" has, is truly beyond the pale.

The anthropomorphic conceit of claiming an alien species would travel thousands of light years in search of a 'god' which eschewed their form in favour of a race of less technologically developed, less intelligent & much less capable earthling species is laughable. IE If humans are made in the imge of their god why does the god have a chest designed to hold a pair of lungs? God is omnipotent surely he/she doesn't need to process oxygen.

The movie is clunkily, poorly produced but just tolerable until the writer decides to ditch the fine history of rational thinking - the hallmark of SciFi ,in favour of superstition. This movie is far more akin to a poorly rendered swords & sorcery movie than a SciFi flick. You have been warned.

Jesus!....It Could Have Been So Much Better!

[zemoguy-97718 · 4/10 · 16 May 2020]

Sat through this thinking we may have a very rare but decent Sci-Fi film, sadly it wasn't the case. Okay it was a watchable yarn, but that's all it was. The budget was there the CGI and locations were there and everything about this film said quality but apart from some dodgy acting moments something just didn't click or gel. Again, the most important 10 minutes of First Contact dialogue at the end of the film was over shadowed by annoying and unnecessary music making it difficult to hear the dialogue...Why do movie producers insist on doing that these days!....Dialogue or music not both and certainly not at the same time!

Nothing to watch here, apart for Highdee Kuan.

[altersaege · 3/10 · 17 May 2020]

She's surely got some of the most astonishing eyes. Have you seen the black circle around the green of her eyes? She's the only highlight of this movie.

Ok ok... the nerd is not a terribly bad actor. But for the rest, with all my love for aliens and sci-fi and my quarantine depression and movies addiction, I couldn't get to the end, and had to fast forward most part of the rest. It looks and feels like a graduation film made as part of the exams to graduate from a cheap cinema school.

But the worst part is that it takes itself very seriously. And that makes of it an involuntary comedy. When then Men in Black and White Robots in white rooms start to arrive, I just felt that any second I would spend watching this movie would have been a second too much.

You can safely skip this, but if you have 5 minutes to spend, fast forward till Kuan appears and enjoy her and then close.

So much bad.

[richardwworkman · 2/10 · 3 February 2021]

The alien abduction trope is a rich minefield of exploding plot holes and convoluted story lines.

And where you have alien conspiracy you need men in black. I didn't mind most of the ufo alien stuff in this but the MiB are so ridiculously bad they may as well have played this as a comedy.

The incompetence of the government agencies is so bad they they've employed badly dressed cybermen on 1970s motorcycles to help capture confused people who are outrageously good at computer stuff.

Oh and the Aliens came to Earth to meet Jesus.

It's not a very good film.

It's a good story and what's more important, it's original

[ChaChangenge · 7/10 · 8 July 2020]

It's a good story and what's more important, it's original! You don't see that often and this is a huge plus.

I personally think, the who team did a good job and I personally enjoyed the story.

If budget and CGI is what you are looking for, stick to crap from Disney or what ever.

I do not care if they spent 100k or 100 million. It's irrelevant.

A 5th grader could've made a better film

[Top_Dawg_Critic · 4/10 · 17 May 2020]

Wow this was bad. A whole lot of nothing - 119 min to be exact, that felt like an eternity with the ridiculously slow pacing. Writer, director, producer, and editor Eric Demeusy makes his first full-length feature film debut, having 6 previous short films on his resume. This should've been his 7th short film, because the 2 hours I had to sit through, was hell. It was cheesy - MIB guys, seriously?, the music and score were ridiculous - annoying and out of place, as was the "I-cant-decide-what-this-film-is-going-to-be-about" writing. Just a variety of up-chuck splattered everywhere. The acting was stale and boring - probably from the lack of direction by Demeusy. The only redeeming quality was the cinematography and some visuals (not the laser beams lol), which is what Demeusy's role has been in the film industry. That's were most of my 4/10 goes towards, and includes cutting a newb filmmaker some slack. Not deserving of anything less, because filmmakers have to start somewhere, right?

Keep it up Eric...I think you are going to get better

[mark-deckard-1967 · 6/10 · 21 February 2021]

There was a lot to like about this movie. And there was a lot to laugh at. But I'm not sure it was meant to be comedy. If you look at the writer directors background he is a visual FX artist. It shows because there was some pretty cool scenes in that regard. But then there were scenes that were so bad I wonder if they were an homage to THX1138. I mean if you can make great looking aliens you can make great looking androids. Note to Director. Androids don't have meaty thighs with pants on. As others have said the sound track was an obscene over use of orchestral sounds. Way over the top. It would have been much better as a quiet stark soundtrack with a sparse bit of eerie synth. Instead we got the greatest hits of the Canadian 90's interspersed with bipolar John Williams. There were some really fresh sci fi concepts. I love that they talk to aliens and find out what the heck they want. By the way the most phenomenal wonder of the whole thing is not alien spacecraft traveling from far away but the miraculous single engine Cessna that makes it from Costa Rica to British Columbia on a single tank of gas! I am glad I watched it and i hope the writer director continues to get better and do more. He has some fun ideas.

A promising beginning that just goes so wrong

[rmarkd · 4/10 · 2 January 2021]

Proximity stars Ryan Masson as Isaac, a math nerd working at JPL. He intercepts some mysterious signal, which causes aliens to abduct him on a hike. He's brought back along with some sort of power to make things disappear -- or something. It's not clear and they don't talk about it until the very end. Anyway, he decides to meet someone who happens to have a similar experience, Sara (Highdee Kuan). He then gets caught by some secret agency who, I kid you not, have some android robots as guards for... reasons? He and Sara get taken to some secret area where he subsequently escapes with her in such a manner that you think "well, obviously they were let go", but no.

They find that this secret area is in Costa Rica, but luckily they just happen to stumble onto super hacker Zed (Christian Prentice), who knows about this secret group and the androids. The three team up to find Carl (Don Scribner), a former abductee. Carl has somehow managed to translate the alien transmission into English. They find Carl, the aliens find them, and it turns out the aliens just want to know from Isaac/Sara about Jesus. The bad guys then find them and kill Sara and destroy the house. But Isaac apparently has some super speed power, the ability to revive Sara, and the ability to be invisible, I think. The movie ends with Carl and Zed forming some sort of group, and Sara and Isaac hitching up and opening up a restaurant.

Sheesh, where to begin. First of all, the movie does start well, with Isaac being abducted, showing the video to a news reporter who took a skeptical viewpoint, causing others to think it was all video editing. There was an interesting story there, but instead of doing that, it took the path I stated. So...

What's with the androids? What's the point of them even existing? They were cool to watch, but had no point. My thought it they didn't want to show people getting killed? The Jesus thing came out of nowhere and went nowhere. Now, I'm not an anti-religious zealot, and I'm fine if this movie wanted to be about aliens searching for Jesus (I think a decent movie could be coaxed from that). But the whole Jesus thing comes out of nowhere and is so jarring that you're taken out of the movie and going "wait, what's that all about?". Isaac and Sara's relationship adds no value and is so artificial. This secret group that has working frigging androids can't catch a bunch of kids flying on a prop plane and a train from Costa Rica to British Columbia Pacing is extremely slow at times Why were they abducted? Why was Isaac given powers?

Really, the movie is just a jumble of scenes that don't really work well together, tied by some sort of a plot that loose threads everywhere and that barely makes sense.

There are some highlights: Highdee Kuan's eyes are absolutely amazing in the movie The androids are a bit fun to watch The characters look like other people. For me: Isaac looks like a cross between DJ Qualls and Asa Butterfield Zed looks like a cross between Jared Leto and the Anonymous mask Carl looks like an old Stephen King with long hair

4/10. Stuff like this makes me think the crap I've written in the past and then read months later with embarrassment could actually be made into a movie.

Thoroughly enjoyable piece of s**t

[BillPaxton99 · 10/10 · 16 August 2021]

I don't think I have ever enjoyed a s**t film as much as I enjoyed this one

From the soundtrack that sounds like they've used a teenagers mix tape from the 90s and played it at random

To the reason the aliens were visiting. I honestly couldn't of written a funnier reason

It is beautiful comedy gold.

Don't mind the haters

[davidfugloe-26327 · 7/10 · 15 May 2020]

I found this movie entertaining. It keeps you guessing all the time. Quite unexpected ending, that many will dislike. It is well shot and the main character is quite good.

Visually very good but the story lacks any sensibility

[nubcwiwz · 5/10 · 7 December 2020]

First off it's not a horrible film by any means and your kids will probably really enjoy it. Visually it's a really good watch but unfortunately that is where the positives end, the story starts off fairly well with introducing characters and and such. It is around half way through when it takes a downward turn, the writer/director decided to try and wedge in a budget version of agent smith from the matrix and what look like a few unused extras costumes from the original Star Wars production. The story is effectively about a guy who gets abducted and releases a video of it which most of the media debunk as fake so he reaches out on the internet to find people with similar experiences, finds a pretty girl then they get taken by a shady government organisation which obviously they escape from, they find another guy who has computer "skills" to look for a long lost abductee who they find and go to whilst being followed by previously mentioned government organisation, a few other none important things happen then they all sit around a literal kitchen table with the aliens and what I can only describe is a very early prototype of a universal translator from star trek. They have a lovely little chat about them trying to find out the origin of the universe, which ends up with Jesus Christ being the answer to the question they have been waiting to ask humans for a long time. And somewhere in there the guy and girl fall in love and live happily ever after but to be honest it's not really relevant as there isn't really any shown development of this relationship or any real character development to speak of. Oh yeah and they guy got some new super abilities which are used a couple of times and also make absolute no sense. So Urm yeah.....enjoy

Not a movie

[morosefox · 1/10 · 21 May 2020]

It's a trick. It's actually an absolutely disgusting lie. Religious advertising masquerading as a movie about aliens. I can't even regard it as a movie, as it is bereft of the basic things a real movie should have... and should be. Completely invalidates itself and what it's pretending to be in the end. But hey, thats religion in a nutshell. Giving ugly, tragically stupid people a lie to believe in so they'll be more comfortable before its all over. Too bad, like this movie... its all just a waste of your time. Which in the end is all we have, before were dead and gone forever. It's more of an insidious crime in this way than a movie.