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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Serviceable sci-fi fix or brain-reboot., October 26, 2009
This review is from: After... (DVD)
For the individual who has exhausted their selection of sci-fi from their in-home resources, but who still needs a sci-fi fix, this title does a serviceable job of exploring a well-trod trope. While watching it I assessed it as 'Jacob's Ladder in Moscow'. Not quite Jacob's Ladder, of course. But watch it to compare with other hereafter texts. (Check out Jim Henson's short film "The Cube"; also read William Golding's "Pincher Martin".) Visually annoying documentary camerawork, tropish horror camerawork, a few over-saturated 'hazy recollection' scenes. One or two decent chills. The somewhat questionable choice of rupture in the de-rezzing effect of bodies is thematically in keeping with the main character's inability to live without a video camera in hand. His friends literally die into interlaced lines of video (echoes of TRON, possibly). (While I'm at it, Videodrome and Brain Scan work on the trope of life imitating digital art / motion picture.) There are far more stultifyingly insulting movies out there.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
You've seen it all before..., September 8, 2008
This review is from: After... (DVD)
I wanted to see this movie because the subject of urban exploration fascinates me. I didn't read the reviews. BAD mistake. This movie has two major flaws. One, the godawful camera work, and two, its predictability. I realized what was going on 30 minutes into it. I believe I speak for the majority when I say the shaky handheld camera "effect" has been played to death. It's no longer original or effective. It's annoying and nauseating and belongs only in death metal music videos. Apart from that, there are some major continuity issues and total lack of coherence that will drive you up the wall if you dare seriously think about it. All in all, this movie seemed like a desperate attempt to somehow fill 90 minutes of screen time. Don't repeat my mistake, save yourself some time and money and skip this one.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Dissapointment, January 8, 2008
This review is from: After... (DVD)
I gave this movie a chance, hoping that the reviews I'd seen were wrong and that they were just missing the point. Turns out: I should trust people more often.
The acting was unconvincing, and the Blair Witch style camera effects dealt the movie a bad blow. A more effective cinematography style could have granted this movie at least a "watch it for the pretty places" review, but no. The places they explore in this movie would have been so much prettier could I have had more than a split second to look at where they were.
As for this being an effective portrayal of urban exploration: it isn't. It got some things right and some things so incredibly wrong.
The movie was linear till about the mid point, then decided it wanted to be something else entirely, and when it finally wrapped up I felt dissapointment I rarely feel with cinema.
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