Less of a movie and more of a proof of concept. The idea is to show you how far $175 can go. I think that's amazing and they should be applauded for what they put together with that, but sadly I don't think it's fair to take that into account when recommending the film. It's an interesting watch, but I would not call it captivating so much as a curiosity.
The narrative is fairly straight forward. As stated in the summary a woman is left behind in a biohazard outbreak and must navigate safety and escape a hostile, spooky environment. There's no dialog. Instead you interpret what's she's feeling via a sort of amorphous soundscape score and her actions.
This is where the movie, at times, fails the viewer. The woman never shows any emotion what-so-ever. It's like she truly doesn't care, but that contradicts her actions as she desperately moves from one situation to the next. Additionally a lot of the things she does are not only unrealistic, but especially not in character for her special circumstance. There's just many examples throughout where she doesn't "act" how someone in her situation would, categorically, for very specific reasons. This unfortunate because it's not budget related. I think if they'd done a little more research, the protagonist could have been portrayed more realistically, to the benefit of the film. Lastly, while I quite enjoyed the soundtrack, there's a few scenes where the tone didn't shift to fit the situation so it ended up being almost bright and bouncy when it should have been heightening the tension.
All that said I never really threw up my hands and walked out. This is a slow burn film and I think it did it well. There's a scene in particular that straight up gave me goosebumps. There's a million ways they could have screwed that one up, but man it felt lifted out of a nightmare. That moment alone elevated this from a 3 to a 5.
I wish I could give this a higher rating considering the budget, but I think for non-cinephiles and anyone not a film school student this will likely be a pass. It's only going to be for folks that enjoy hard work shown in a film rather than the whole picture.
The narrative is fairly straight forward. As stated in the summary a woman is left behind in a biohazard outbreak and must navigate safety and escape a hostile, spooky environment. There's no dialog. Instead you interpret what's she's feeling via a sort of amorphous soundscape score and her actions.
This is where the movie, at times, fails the viewer. The woman never shows any emotion what-so-ever. It's like she truly doesn't care, but that contradicts her actions as she desperately moves from one situation to the next. Additionally a lot of the things she does are not only unrealistic, but especially not in character for her special circumstance. There's just many examples throughout where she doesn't "act" how someone in her situation would, categorically, for very specific reasons. This unfortunate because it's not budget related. I think if they'd done a little more research, the protagonist could have been portrayed more realistically, to the benefit of the film. Lastly, while I quite enjoyed the soundtrack, there's a few scenes where the tone didn't shift to fit the situation so it ended up being almost bright and bouncy when it should have been heightening the tension.
All that said I never really threw up my hands and walked out. This is a slow burn film and I think it did it well. There's a scene in particular that straight up gave me goosebumps. There's a million ways they could have screwed that one up, but man it felt lifted out of a nightmare. That moment alone elevated this from a 3 to a 5.
I wish I could give this a higher rating considering the budget, but I think for non-cinephiles and anyone not a film school student this will likely be a pass. It's only going to be for folks that enjoy hard work shown in a film rather than the whole picture.