plot : two teen couples go to a church party , drink and then drive .
they get into an accident .
one of the guys dies , but his girlfriend continues to see him in her life , and has nightmares .
what’s the deal ?
watch the movie and ” sorta ” find out . . .
critique : a mind-fuck movie for the teen generation that touches on a very cool idea , but presents it in a very bad package .
which is what makes this review an even harder one to write , since i generally applaud films which attempt to break the mold , mess with your head and such ( lost highway & memento ) , but there are good and bad ways of making all types of films , and these folks just didn’t snag this one correctly .
they seem to have taken this pretty neat concept , but executed it terribly .
so what are the problems with the movie ?
well , its main problem is that it’s simply too jumbled .
it starts off ” normal ” but then downshifts into this ” fantasy ” world in which you , as an audience member , have no idea what’s going on .
there are dreams , there are characters coming back from the dead , there are others who look like the dead , there are strange apparitions , there are disappearances , there are a looooot of chase scenes , there are tons of weird things that happen , and most of it is simply not explained .
now i personally don’t mind trying to unravel a film every now and then , but when all it does is give me the same clue over and over again , i get kind of fed up after a while , which is this film’s biggest problem .
it’s obviously got this big secret to hide , but it seems to want to hide it completely until its final five minutes .
and do they make things entertaining , thrilling or even engaging , in the meantime ?
not really .
the sad part is that the arrow and i both dig on flicks like this , so we actually figured most of it out by the half-way point , so all of the strangeness after that did start to make a little bit of sense , but it still didn’t the make the film all that more entertaining .
i guess the bottom line with movies like this is that you should always make sure that the audience is ” into it ” even before they are given the secret password to enter your world of understanding .
i mean , showing melissa sagemiller running away from visions for about 20 minutes throughout the movie is just plain lazy ! !
okay , we get it . . . there
are people chasing her and we don’t know who they are .
do we really need to see it over and over again ?
how about giving us different scenes offering further insight into all of the strangeness going down in the movie ?
apparently , the studio took this film away from its director and chopped it up themselves , and it shows .
there might’ve been a pretty decent teen mind-fuck movie in here somewhere , but i guess ” the suits ” decided that turning it into a music video with little edge , would make more sense .
the actors are pretty good for the most part , although wes bentley just seemed to be playing the exact same character that he did in american beauty , only in a new neighborhood .
but my biggest kudos go out to sagemiller , who holds her own throughout the entire film , and actually has you feeling her character’s unraveling .
overall , the film doesn’t stick because it doesn’t entertain , it’s confusing , it rarely excites and it feels pretty redundant for most of its runtime , despite a pretty cool ending and explanation to all of the craziness that came before it .
oh , and by the way , this is not a horror or teen slasher flick . . . it’s
just packaged to look that way because someone is apparently assuming that the genre is still hot with the kids .
it also wrapped production two years ago and has been sitting on the shelves ever since .
whatever . . . skip
it !
where’s joblo coming from ?
a nightmare of elm street 3 ( 7/10 ) – blair witch 2 ( 7/10 ) – the crow ( 9/10 ) – the crow : salvation ( 4/10 ) – lost highway ( 10/10 ) – memento ( 10/10 ) – the others ( 9/10 ) – stir of echoes ( 8/10 )