11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Really quite good, but needs a second viewing, July 1, 2008
This movie is probably something you will either really like, or you will hate, but I hope that you give it a chance. It is obviously a very low-budget film--that's clear from the start, so I didn't have my hopes up very high.
However, I was *very* pleasantly surprised. The story makes some sense on the first view, but you really need to watch it a second time to put a lot of things together. Most of the story is told with clues and hints; you aren't going to be hit over the head with the meaning of the movie. I would almost say that it might even be more enjoyable--you'd be better able to enjoy some very fine, subtly crafted scenes--if you knew what was going on beforehand.
Overall, I really liked this movie. It initially looks like it is going to be a horror film, and it has some elements of horror (which I dislike--horror, that is), but this is, essentially, a science fiction film.
To summarize the story without giving anything away, two young lovers, Dylan (Shane Elliott) and Megan (Jackie Kreisler), are on their way from Reno to Las Vegas to visit her foster parents. After sunset, they stop at a bar for some food in the region where Area 51 is, and that's where things get spooky. The bartender behaves strangely from the get-go. This first meeting with him is chock full of clues about what the movie is about, so pay attention to the interactions between him, Dylan, and Megan. A lot is said with their eyes. Notice who is and who isn't surprised at certain words and phrases. Notice especially how the bartender looks at Dylan, and Dylan at the bartender.
After their meal, Dylan and Megan proceed down the road, but (of course!) the car fails. After that, things get rapidly spookier. I don't want to give away anything, so I will stop summarizing the plot at this point. A lot happens, and we learn a lot through clues we might see or hear for only a split second.
Not everything is explained in the end, though, and there are some things in the movie that are clearly there for effect; they don't really have anything to do with the story (at least as far as I can tell--the clown's eyes at the very start of the movie, for example). But there are plenty of clues to put together a pretty substantial and interesting story.
There are a few things I didn't like, and I don't know if most of them had to do with the low budget or just a bad transfer to DVD. It loses a star for these things. The sound quality isn't great; I had to turn the volume way up to hear the dialog, but since the sound effects are much louder than the dialog, that meant some unfortunately loud moments.
Also, the desert scenes are too dark, again perhaps because of a bad transfer to DVD. This made it hard to tell what was going on onscreen. The color tones are an unattractive yellow ochre in the bar but they are a much more elegant and intriguing blue shade in outside scenes.
As for the acting, I think Shane Elliott and especially Jonathan Breck did some top-notch acting in this. Jackie Kreisler did a fine job, though she spent perhaps a little too much time screaming, and at one point, even though she had left Dylan lying on the road unconscious far behind her, she cries out for him repeatedly to help her, which is the sort of thing that ruins immersion, because she hasn't been portrayed as idiotic up until that point.
Still, overall, I enjoyed this movie. I enjoy puzzles and I enjoy putting together clues and figuring things out, so this is the kind of movie I like a lot, low budget and too many screams notwithstanding. I either haven't entirely figured it out yet, though, or not all the loose ends are tied up. If you like that kind of thing too, and are willing to ignore the low budget and live with some ambiguity, then you might enjoy this movie too.
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