As usual, whenever I watch a film for the 1st time I don't know the plot, and this goes especially for horror and mystery films when I don't want to even know the basic premise, I just need to know the EXACT genres involved. Otherwise I might get bored. Trailers? I have been ignoring them for decades.
Yet the first 20 minutes are so annoying anyway that I had to skip a few scenes, coz American teens "paaaartyyyying" makes me nauseous. But I was also hopeful: they're gonna start getting murdered soon, right? All of them. By the aliens brought by the meteorites? They'll kill all the dumb teens, right?
SPOILERS
Not quite. These "aliens" are so THICK they actually decide to DOUBLE the inferior species they discover on Earth. A good ol' teen massacre may not be original but it would have been quite satisfactory given the low expectations of such a movie, because none of these cretinous characters deserves to exist. Pity the aliens didn't quite agree...
Well, not aliens. More like parallel-world identicals brought by... a comet. Because COMETS unite parallel worlds, as we all know. That's what they're for. And acting as buses for religious cults, that too.
Kidding aside, the problem with this movie (aside from the "paaartyyyy" setting and the young morons) is the reactions of the kids being duplicated. Several reactions are realistic, but some aren't. Certain decisions/reactions make no sense. For example, WHY hang around? Why not just leave the house. Very obvious. Yet they stay indoors for quite a long time despite NOBODY preventing them from leaving. This makes very little sense.
Yeah, sure, I know... These are all "college" idiots, buffoons. But still. Basic survival instincts ought to have kicked in, and we all have them: idiots and geniuses alike. Even daft "students" have them.
What the blond protagonist does is definitely not survival instinct. Instead of dealing with this situation head on (which he does somewhat at first) he eventually decides that this is a great opportunity to apologize - again - to his ex, this time to her alien double. Which is such an absurd bonehead move by the screenwriter, because OBVIOUSLY during a cloning invasion your first instinct is to BEFRIEND one of the clones... not run away from them.
Then loverboy does something even worse in the 64th minute, when he mixes up his two exes and it actually takes him several minutes to realize this, as if he'd just learned that there's two of each. So daft. Totally illogical. I mean, I know these kids are all utter cretins, but come on...
Let's face it, "Coherence" handled this shtick far better, several years later. But what can you expect from a teen horror film. It caters to a teen audience, the beer-bong demographic, amoeba.
The movie also makes it plainly obvious that the clones are only as dangerous as the originals. This is hinted at very early on when Evil Kyle kills his Evil Kyle double (or the other way round, irrelevant which), and then later it is 100% confirmed with the parrots which peacefully co-exist because they aren't violent i.e. The original bird isn't violent hence neither is its clone. None of the dumb kids picked up on this hence why they started getting paranoid.
The script unavoidably descends into chaos in the final third, with the screenwriter very obviously in over his head with the overly complex situation he'd created. His biggest mistake: too many characters. In "Coherence" there are far less characters hence there is a semblance of order and logic whereas this movie loses the plot (literally and figuratively). The mass-violence barn scene is not only predictable but silly, and not even convincingly directed and shot. Loverboy deciding to BRUTALLY STAB his ex (the one that didn't forgive him) in order to keep the clone (the one that did forgive him) may be a "clever" and original shtick but it's also insanely far-fetched, because suddenly loverboy turns out to be a cold-hearted psycho killer, which comes totally out of left field. Not to mention that he DOESN'T know how this whole sci-fi situation will eventually play out, he doesn't know what kind of a cloning phenomenon it is. The writer sacrificed characterization hence logic just so he could throw in that plot-twist. You don't do that. Or you do, but only if you're a desperate writer who treats the audience like morons. (On the other hand, if the audiences are anything like these dumb teens, then why not...)
But then, the "highlight": the lesbian kiss between a clone double, the height of millennial narcissism. Of course the writer didn't intend this symbolism, but I found it very suitable, that these self-infatuated hedonistic egomaniacal kids might secretly wanna bonk their own selves. Like in that Knorkator song...
Yet the first 20 minutes are so annoying anyway that I had to skip a few scenes, coz American teens "paaaartyyyying" makes me nauseous. But I was also hopeful: they're gonna start getting murdered soon, right? All of them. By the aliens brought by the meteorites? They'll kill all the dumb teens, right?
SPOILERS
Not quite. These "aliens" are so THICK they actually decide to DOUBLE the inferior species they discover on Earth. A good ol' teen massacre may not be original but it would have been quite satisfactory given the low expectations of such a movie, because none of these cretinous characters deserves to exist. Pity the aliens didn't quite agree...
Well, not aliens. More like parallel-world identicals brought by... a comet. Because COMETS unite parallel worlds, as we all know. That's what they're for. And acting as buses for religious cults, that too.
Kidding aside, the problem with this movie (aside from the "paaartyyyy" setting and the young morons) is the reactions of the kids being duplicated. Several reactions are realistic, but some aren't. Certain decisions/reactions make no sense. For example, WHY hang around? Why not just leave the house. Very obvious. Yet they stay indoors for quite a long time despite NOBODY preventing them from leaving. This makes very little sense.
Yeah, sure, I know... These are all "college" idiots, buffoons. But still. Basic survival instincts ought to have kicked in, and we all have them: idiots and geniuses alike. Even daft "students" have them.
What the blond protagonist does is definitely not survival instinct. Instead of dealing with this situation head on (which he does somewhat at first) he eventually decides that this is a great opportunity to apologize - again - to his ex, this time to her alien double. Which is such an absurd bonehead move by the screenwriter, because OBVIOUSLY during a cloning invasion your first instinct is to BEFRIEND one of the clones... not run away from them.
Then loverboy does something even worse in the 64th minute, when he mixes up his two exes and it actually takes him several minutes to realize this, as if he'd just learned that there's two of each. So daft. Totally illogical. I mean, I know these kids are all utter cretins, but come on...
Let's face it, "Coherence" handled this shtick far better, several years later. But what can you expect from a teen horror film. It caters to a teen audience, the beer-bong demographic, amoeba.
The movie also makes it plainly obvious that the clones are only as dangerous as the originals. This is hinted at very early on when Evil Kyle kills his Evil Kyle double (or the other way round, irrelevant which), and then later it is 100% confirmed with the parrots which peacefully co-exist because they aren't violent i.e. The original bird isn't violent hence neither is its clone. None of the dumb kids picked up on this hence why they started getting paranoid.
The script unavoidably descends into chaos in the final third, with the screenwriter very obviously in over his head with the overly complex situation he'd created. His biggest mistake: too many characters. In "Coherence" there are far less characters hence there is a semblance of order and logic whereas this movie loses the plot (literally and figuratively). The mass-violence barn scene is not only predictable but silly, and not even convincingly directed and shot. Loverboy deciding to BRUTALLY STAB his ex (the one that didn't forgive him) in order to keep the clone (the one that did forgive him) may be a "clever" and original shtick but it's also insanely far-fetched, because suddenly loverboy turns out to be a cold-hearted psycho killer, which comes totally out of left field. Not to mention that he DOESN'T know how this whole sci-fi situation will eventually play out, he doesn't know what kind of a cloning phenomenon it is. The writer sacrificed characterization hence logic just so he could throw in that plot-twist. You don't do that. Or you do, but only if you're a desperate writer who treats the audience like morons. (On the other hand, if the audiences are anything like these dumb teens, then why not...)
But then, the "highlight": the lesbian kiss between a clone double, the height of millennial narcissism. Of course the writer didn't intend this symbolism, but I found it very suitable, that these self-infatuated hedonistic egomaniacal kids might secretly wanna bonk their own selves. Like in that Knorkator song...