A
photojournalist needs to get his boos daughter back to USA but to do so he’ll
have to cross an alien contaminated area.
As an achievement
this movie is impressive. The director, Gareth Edwards, went to Mexico with a
troupe composed of only 7 people, and one of them was the driver, and managed
to film a fully fledged sci-fi movie. The idea was to film everything on
location using as extras the actual inhabitants of the place or simply people
that was passing nearby and then add monsters in postproduction.
Edwards,
who had previous experience as a special effects guy, added all the CGI shots
by himself, alone, in his bedroom using only off the shelves software. The
resulting effects are surprisingly good, big summer blockbuster level. Of
course there’s no real interaction with the monsters because he had no way to
properly set the shots but the monsters themselves are weird amazing octopus
like creatures.
The problem
starts when we look at it as a movie. In the end this is a glorified road trip
with sci-fi sceneries. With all the extras recruited on the spot Edwards
quickly had to throw away the script so much of the dialogue is improvised.
This of course means that the plot is meandering and unfocused.
There is
some chemistry between the two protagonists, in real life already boyfriend and
girlfriend but it’s really not enough. To sustain a whole movie you need stuff
to happens, plots, things. Here, I must concede, there is a somewhat dreamy
experience but it would have been much better as a short.
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