At a remote village by the sea a young boy starts to ask questions about his life when he thinks that he has seen a dead boy in the sea while swimming. The strange life that he is living with his Mother is further called into question when he’s taken to a hospital for a procedure.
Sometimes as a reviewer you get to see the poster of a film before going into the film, where you can see a lot of other reviewers opinions and star markings spread across the glossy print. When you’ve finished in the press screening you come out and look at the poster. A lot of times you stare at the poster and agree with your colleagues, other times, like after Evolution, you stare at the poster and wonder what drugs these people were taken. It’s not my place to name names or tell you what other people through of the film, it’s my job to tell you what I thought of the film and if it’s worth your cash to see it in the cinema or wait for home release, or just watch it on TV for free.
The good news is that at 86 minutes you don’t have to waste too much of your time watching this film if you decide to watch it. The bad news is that at least 50 minutes of the film could have easily been hacked off the running time and you’d still be a little disappointed. The performances are fine, it’s just that this is a short film made into a feature, and for no good reason. Better still and probably a fairer way to describe this film is to say that it’s a short piece from The Outer Limits or The Twilight Zone series, over stretched, and not memorable. The premise becomes more science fiction or horror, it’s muddled, as the film goes on. What destroys any sense of tension though is the pieces of the film that are not needed and there are too many of those to count. You lose the story and the will to keep watching with more shots of people just walking for no reason.
I hate giving a one or no star rating to a film, I don’t think I’ve given any film zero stars yet, but this came close. What saved the film from the zero zone is the young boy who, when it was allowed to tell us his story, gave a better performance than this film deserves.
Nothing is explained fully, which you can live with as a being of intelligence, but what you can’t live with is the amount of time wasted on shots that don’t serve the film. There is some amazing underwater photography but it doesn’t belong here and does nothing to carry the film forward in any way. Some people may think I’m being overly harsh here, but I honestly think that I’m being overly generous. When you go to the cinema it should be an experience, you should come out with a feeling of something, happiness or sadness, this just made me wonder about the choice of profession that I’ve made. I don’t think that paying to see this film in a cinema is a smart choice for your movie money, if you have a subscription to an online service that is carrying this film, okay, you can go for that. Even if this was on free TV, and someone offered me beer and pizza to sit down and watch it with them I’d have to pass. You can get through this film in about 30 minutes and still be disappointed with the whole thing. It’s a shame. But that’s life.
[yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
Director:Â Lucile Hadzihalilovic
Writers: Lucile Hadzihalilovic, Alante Kavaite, Geoff Cox
Stars:Â Max Brebant, Roxane Duran, Julie-Marie Parmentier
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