This film is good enough to purchase. Not a ground breaking film, but a well composed one, which makes it special considering how difficult it is to find those. The common film watcher will not enjoy this, no more that they would enjoy listening to His Name Alive on a Saturday evening. It would also help if the viewer understood the meaning/message of the story, or even resonated with the characters a little.
Pros
Cons
I've seen some trash Sci-fi productions receive more praise than this film. I think people are upset because of the trailer, honestly, that trailer does no justice to the movie at all. It panders to people looking for a certain flavor, but doesn't deliver, merely because it can't. I only found this movie when reviewing the filmography relationships of the cast members, a tailored search that doesn't tend to disappoint me.
7/10
Pros
- I knew the script might've been an issue when I saw the writer, but when your acting cast is solid enough to support the greener members, it pans out. This would be a good example of when not to blame the writer, or the dialog, it's delivery.
- There's "flow", simply meaning that there were no long blank spots of "when is something going to happen" or large missing pieces of the story that makes you feel as if entire segments of the screenplay where chopped out at the last minute, making you say "I think there was suppose to be a connecting scene there". I hate it when films do this, and I've seen bigger budget film completely screw up because there are too many hands in the story and no one can keep it straight. This is why I always give Director/Writer films special attention, simply because it gives them the power they need to see their vision through to the end.
- Thank you Ivo Watts-Russell for the splendid OST, literally already had almost every song that played. I imagined a movie that ended with a Dif Juz top 10, just didn't think it was out there, but here it is. Well done. I always say that the music makes the movie. It's the element that people often ignore, but only when broken down do the realize how crucial it is.
Cons
- Wilson Cruz's acting came off very "Disney" (So scripted it was almost comic). I tried many times to excuse it, telling myself that this is how it was supposed to be, "this is his role", "this is what they wanted". I like to believe there's a measure of logic behind these things, not in this case.
- Christina Zilber's acting came off the same way, but with hints of "I'm not really an actor", which is understandable considering she isn't, actually Joyride could be considered her only feature. She wasn't horrible, just decent enough to tolerate.
- In some scenes, you would expect something to happen, and it does, but not the they way you were expecting, which is how it should've happened. An example of this is in the mirror shattering scene where she hits the ceiling light instead of throwing something onto the mirror causing a dramatic shatter... only to (moments later) hit the same mirror with her hand, causing several cracks, but no shatter. That was a very disappointing build up.
- There were a few scenes where a little extra dialog could've gone a long way, for example, one scene where someone ask J.T "have you seen/done/gone to xyz" and Tobey responds with a simple "not really", if you saw the movie, you would hear these missed opportunities, as if he meant to say "No, not recently", that one change would've added so much to the scene, and a few others where the dialog sounds as if it were cut short, not that what was already there wasn't good, it just could've been better.
I've seen some trash Sci-fi productions receive more praise than this film. I think people are upset because of the trailer, honestly, that trailer does no justice to the movie at all. It panders to people looking for a certain flavor, but doesn't deliver, merely because it can't. I only found this movie when reviewing the filmography relationships of the cast members, a tailored search that doesn't tend to disappoint me.
7/10