This film was not awful, but it was below a 5 of 10 rating. I felt the acting actually was not that bad, though some of the actors' performances were underwhelming. And for a low budget, I thought the production values were pretty good.
My problem was with story, direction, and editing. Many low-budget movies take too long on certain shots and not enough story for other bits of plot, and this is no exception. It's like in a novel, the challenge for the author is to convey the necessary action and feeling in the right amount of words - too few and there's not enough sense, too many and you bore your audience. The camera effects and freak-out scenes which were used to express the fear and alienation that Anna was feeling went from startling and creepy to redundant relatively early.
Story-wise, there wasn't enough going. There's less suspense to reveal early on that the protagonists are being watched and guided, and too much backstory is revealed through asides and dialogue rather than shown. So to fill in the void, a lot of footage is spent on city exploration, at least in the first third of the movie. And the ending seemed to be an arbitrary pull-the-rug-out-from-under-you downer rather than anything that satisfies the audience (by satisfaction, I mean making the pieces fit together rather than bewildering, or give rise to a sort of debate; not talking about happy endings). Overall, the direction of Experiment seemed to value mood over tension; so for me, I was left with detached curiosity rather than any emotional involvement.
reply
share
djsnafu23
16 years ago
The acting is laughable and the music pathetic. The end makes no sense whatsoever to me (the involvement of the minister.....I'd love to hear a reasonable, coherent explanation for what the experiment really tried to achieve...was it just toi prove feelings are memory-bound??? Seemed far to silly with the far-fetched unrelistic baddies if that was all).
SPOLIER
Kid killin dad was cool though, and given how bad the first hour was I was convinvced it was gonna end in typical Hollywood/Seagal manner, so I was at least surprised there.
myspace.com/bankrupteuropeans
Coz lifes too short to listen to Madlib
reply
share