Tockinit
not horrible nor great
Chirphymium
It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional
Sienna-Rose Mclaughlin
The movie really just wants to entertain people.
keckman-11449
It's a shame that most viewers seem to have missed the boat on this movie. I think the whole intent was to EMBRACE, even celebrate the B-movie phenomenon. I fully expected it to be a stereotypical, low-budget alien movie . . . And yes, it WAS. Complete with cliche elements & characters: alien abductions; UFO crash; government cover-ups; cabin-in-the-woods; flying saucers; "The Greys" . . . the ditzy blonde; the cowardly idiot (boy, did they fix HIS little red wagon!); the pot-growing, paranoid, conspiracy-nut Vietnam vet, the heroic surviving (so you think!) young couple . . . . This movie employed every worn-out alien cliche out there, but with some dark humor & unexpected twists.
Folks, my take on it was that the cliches & stereotypes were absolutely intentional. I rather enjoyed the homage & nods to the scores of past alien movies (& even to "The Smoking Man" from X-Files).
Admittedly, many times throughout the film I thought, "Yup, here we go - I know what comes next." But then the darkly funny twists pulled me back in. While some of you found the ending disturbing, I think it was brilliant. It led viewers to the edge of an expected typical conclusion, with a feigned "happily-ever-after" sappy scene that had my eyes rolling . . . . Until the film kept rolling, & delivered its unexpected coup-de-gras.
If you don't appreciate dark humor - then this one's not for you. If you're hoping for a deep plot, well-developed characters, a sweet, happy ending, or a never-before-seen portrayal of aliens & UFOs - then this one definitely isn't for you. But I found it to be delightfully entertaining.
-OldFartAlienMovieBuff
a_baron
If you go down to the woods tonight you'll find...E.T. And he doesn't want to go home. Not only that, he's angry, but if you will shoot his co-pilot, what else can you expect? If you find this film confusing, book up on the conspiracy garbage about Area 51. In reality, the most bizarre alien ever to land at Roswell was John Denver, and he was a distinctly friendly one.Seriously, this film misses in so many ways, even if you do spot the cultural reference to "The X-Files" towards the end - Smoking Man. And "Spirit In The Sky" should definitely not have appeared on the soundtrack, not even the original version, much less the Elton John cover. Far more thematic would have been his own "I've Seen The Saucers".
Stephen Abell
So here we have another cabin in the woods story with a group of red- shirt young people, and as always their justification for being there is tenuous. Evidently, the cabin was the vacation home for April and her family. Now her family has fallen apart her mother has conned her daughter into going to the cabin to take a few pictures of the shack so she can sell it; apparently, real-estate agents charge the earth for this service. From the first night, the stereotypical group of friends encounter a series of strange and scary events.So this sounds very familiar... and it is, though it does have some pretty good points... in the beginning at least. I loved the opening sequence which is Bill and Ted's Nightmare. The thing which surprised me most was how good Gil Bellows is as Sheriff Murphy, the scene when he pulls the "let's go die'ers" over was one of my favourite scene's and Bellows is very believable, I wouldn't cross the Sheriff.Then when Michael Ironside appears I was already enjoying the film and was looking forward to seeing how it would progress...Down the toilet... with a double flush!Ironside and Bellows aren't in the movie anywhere near long enough, and though the rest of the cast are okay it's their storyline which lets the film down. Brittany Allan and Freddie Storma aren't too bad as the lovers, April and Kyle, though they're going through a rough patch. Melanie, played by Melanie Papalia, is such a bland throwaway character that if she stood in one place for too long she'd just fade away. Then there's Seth who's portrayed by Jesse Moss; too well if truth be told, as the character is unlikeable and you wonder how anybody could actually be his friend... Oh, I nearly forgot Lex, Anja Savcic, who is Seth's eye-candy "blonde", at the moment, girlfriend - guess who goes first...The story starts it's slide into the pan when Travis (Ironside) recounts to the red-shirts that the human race knows about the existence of aliens and it's excepted that if we don't mess with them then they won't do anything too bad to us... Okay! Unfortunately, April has killed one of them and this action has put her friends on their hit-list.Though most of the movie is pretty unoriginal, there are some good scenes like the opening and the one where Murphy comes across a taped abduction and when he gets mind-melded. The special effects are above average too - the guy's even built a wrecked UFO, though when you see the size of the greys you do wonder how they ever fitted inside. My favourite effect is the tractor beam... I wanna go!Though it's the ending that really kills the film. For some strange reason writer and director Colin Minihan, along with writer Stuart Ortiz (under the pseudonym The Vicious Brothers) opt for an over-the-top unbelievable schmaltzy ending. Though Minihan is capable of filming nicely stylised shots, with some interesting angles, he's not too great at handling emotion. The penultimate climax is risible and instead of making me think, NO! you can't do that!, it had me giggling... and cringing... And the homage to the X-Files is more of an Oh No! than a Cool! moment. However, he nearly makes up for it with the beautifully filmed climax, the effects and cuts are seamless, I skipped back a few times just to watch that scene over again.If the Vicious Brothers had risked it all to give the audience a fresh approach to the "Cabin In The Woods" sub-genre with some original characters and a more realistic outcome, as well as filling in some gaping holes in the story, then this could have been a brilliant movie. Shame.I would recommend it for the reasons I've stated above as they just outweigh the negative elements, though I would say rent it before you consider buying... and only rent when it's cheap.
DBLurker
I spent the whole movie trying to understand what they were trying to do with the whole thing. Was it intentionally so cliché filled, trying to be corny? Or was it trying to take itself seriously? I kept asking myself because the movie does nothing new with the aliens, in-fact, it's trying to copy X-Files with generic aliens and even a reference at the end. But then, the movie isn't smart enough to make fun of all this and looks like it's actually taking itself seriously.Then there's the ending. You know how in LOTR you kept getting fade-outs thinking "this is the end" but it suddenly keeps on going? This movie did that 3 times in a row where it just refused to end at the "right" moment and then kept making it worse by showing how dumb it can be, till the end.It's so bad that I rated it 5/10 and went down to 3/10 while writing the review. Pray that I don't go any lower..
