Friday, October 19, 2012

Area 407 (2012)

A warning - if you're prone to motion sickness, you will not want to watch this movie.  I had to stop looking about half way through it, and keep glancing at the screen every once in awhile.  The camera spends a lot of time swinging around as the footage is supposed to be shot by a thirteen year old girl.  An hour after the movie ended, I still felt kind of nauseous.

With that out of the way, you still may not want to watch this anyway since it's filled with annoying characters, as well as lots of shrill and irritating yelling.  Supposedly the film was ad libbed which explains a lot since everyone just sort of shouts in panic and no one is very interesting.  It's like watching some teenage girls home movies, except for the plane crash.

Our main characters are two teenage girls flying home to Los Angeles on their own.  The younger girl is filming their trip.  She's cheerfully talking to and filming everyone on the plane, including the requisite a-hole character.

When the plane hits turbulence, it crashes into an isolated area and  only the tail of the plane remains intact.  The surviving passengers all have head wounds, so you keep expecting them to lose consciousness, but nothing much comes from it.

Soon the survivors realize there is something in the dark and it is a predator.  Will they survive?  Is anyone trying to rescue them?  Will we care?  The shrill and constant yelling is not enjoyable.  Also why are they filming after the crash?  Don't they have better things to concentrate on?  And how does the battery last so long?

The mystery menace in the dark is only seen a few times.  This can be an effective way to build tension and fear as often imagination is scarier than what is seen on screen.  But in this case, the first glimpse we see was aptly described by my friend as a "drive by dinosaur."  Instead of being scary, it was hysterically funny.

There is a twist ending that people familiar with horror movies should see coming a mile away.

No comments: