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darthtyran
Reviews
Mount Adams (2021)
A starter film...
This is a starter film...I get that... I know how difficult it is to make a film... I study film. I will give it to them that they actually have a production here... most do not get this fare... That being said, this film is missing about half a solid hour. It feels incomplete because it is incomplete. For starters, took too long for the group in question to get to the mountain. Nobody goes hiking in dense forests and into the snowy heights with short shorts! I was in the military and we donned heavy, pocketed, pants that we bloused into sturdy hiking boots, long sleeves to keep the bugs off of your arms and legs. Nobody used bug repellent which would have added realism to the group. You do not wear glasses to bed, if you go camping in dense forests you have more than a letter-opener as a knife, you have survival rations, you have a GUN! And a flare gun. You also have a means to communicate with the outside world with today's tech... (this could be destroyed by events but having one makes the group more plausible.) A park ranger is not going to sell out for $400. There is no real resolution to the story... certain injuries are explained away...and the director's "disappearance" is completely unresolved. (he is also an actor in the film) As the poster indicates there is a UFO...not a spoiler... It goes somewhere important in the film...which is not explored at all. I give them an A for effort as I know the headache of production...however, a day of deeper thought would have gone along way to cementing the credibility of the group. Rethink and retool the series of events leading up to and during their investigation...they spent more time on some punchy and sophomoric insults than the details...and we know what is said of "the details". Each conundrum must have a "solid" resolution...not simply batting an eye lash at problems and eminent peril. The CGI is better than many direct to dvd or syfy channel fare...but a little less of the pixel created critters and more of what happened to the director's character would have made this far more interesting.
Stake Land (2010)
Good but preachy
Standard post apocalypse venue. This time its a vampire virus not a zombie or alien invasion. The cinematography is decent with a theatrical production value. The acting is well above syfy fare and engaging. The writers do present us with various forms of vampires from attractive sirens to berserkers. That being said, the real villains of the show are not the infected but the worst parts of humanity. In one instance it is mentioned that there are areas of the US populated by cannibals... and then there are maps that reveal large areas of vampire territory. Fortunately for humanity, the vampires have limited mental utility. They are not Vlad Tepes Dracula. At best they have a slightly higher cognitive functionality as a rabid Doberman; or at least it appears that way.
The vampires have many forms as I mentioned before. Some more human and others more monstrous, however the makeup is inconsistent and sometimes misses the mark. I would chalk that up to budgetary constraints. My biggest complaint is that the movie makes numerous barbed attempts at anti-Christian diatribe. Apparently, it is "Christians" who seem to be causing all the trouble by using vamps as weapons. The irony is the cult leader never mentions Christ or Jesus just god...(with a little g ). The Nun claims that cult members claim to be Christians. The dialogue says it all... All that goodness shattered by some Christian crazies dropping vamps from the sky... This is not surprising for most of today's productions. The boogie man cannot be Islam or Buddhism or some radical Communist group all of whom have proven to be insanely violent in history... it has to be Christians. Other than the offensive attack on Christians I can recommend this to genre fans. If you can see it on legal free sites it would be a decent Halloween treat...or trick depending on point of view.