I could have hated it more than I did--I gave it a 2/10, but yeah, this is pretty close to the bottom of the barrel. It's another in a tortuous string of homemade "horror" films that have blossomed since it's become so easy to buy a camcorder and some rudimentary editing software for your home computer. Salvation ostensibly was shot with pro cameras, film, etc., but if that's the case, they wasted their money, because it looks like another entry in the camcorder crop.
I don't know why horror is the genre that 90-something percent of those filmmakers choose. My guess is that they figure focusing on more "titillating" material--aside from porno--is a way to avoid the fact that they can't write an engaging, entertaining story and script, although why they're not noticing that they also suck at effects (and effects make-up), action scenes, creating any atmosphere, etc., I do not know. I also do not know why so many filmmakers of this caliber take themselves so deathly seriously. The no-budget, homemade films that venture into any humor or self deprecation are very few and far between. If they took more of a Troma attitude to filmmaking, this stuff might be a bit more entertaining.
I gave it one extra point, though, in that I sensed that there was at least an honest effort to make something worth watching here. The director attempted to shoot coverage, edit the film decently, make sure that you could hear the dialogue, etc. Those are all very rudimentary things that surprisingly enough quite a few no-budget filmmakers have simply not bothered with. But there's not one aspect of Salvation, including things that are not as difficult to avoid completely screwing up--like making decisions about your actors' wardrobe--that doesn't have serious problems. It's hard for me to believe that it would be that difficult even pulling random people off the street to get better average performances from them. Even though the script is horrible, better performances would have made this more watchable.
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