Nightscape-I No Longer Believe in Anything
What the hell did I do to deserve this?
I was looking FORWARD to this movie. The trailer was fantastic! It was dark, edgy, and atmospheric. It was moody and oppressive. It was…
Well, it wasn’t what was shat onto my TV screen.
Let’s not go apes**t here. The trailer IS in the movie, but it’s a dream sequence and has NO bearing on the plot whatsoever. As a matter of fact, NOTHING in this movie has any bearing on the plot. Essentially, there is no plot for any particular action or scene to really relate to. It’s more like they just filmed a bunch of disconnected scenes, then spliced them together. Badly.
With silly putty.
Okay, I’ll back up. I’m probably just irked like hell because I really wanted the movie I saw in the trailer, not the movie I got. It’s not really a terrible movie, but it’s not fantastic, either.
Emily Galash plays Kat, a lone drifter who is on the road trying to escape her bad luck. When the movie opens, we meet Smoke, who is a racer she has fallen in with. There’s no sexual relationship or anything going on. They’re simply traveling partners.
They happen across a diner that has been ransacked. The attacker has left all of the customers and help dead. Kat and Smoke find a waitress in the back, but she falls down and begins to transform into a demon. She attacks Smoke and cuts his arm. Before she can finish him off, our duo is saved by Roshak, a Hispanic gunman with a strange handgun and a desire to simply drive around in his black El Camino all day.
Roshak is on the search for a phantom car that brings the demons in people forward. He takes Kat and Smoke to a motel, but Smoke goes demon and kills Kat before escaping.
Hold up. Dammit.
Okay, so they killed the main character again. This time, WAY early. The movie has been on for about twenty minutes. Dag-nab-it, they pulled this crap in Zombinator!
Oh, wait. She comes back to life.
For. No. Reason.
Well, either her luck is turning around and we witnessed a legitimate miracle, or this chick has the deepest sleep EVER. Either way, she and Roshak hit the road to continue the hunt for the phantom car. Their adventures lead them to a revival, where Roshak recovers Smoke and recruits him to help them draw out the phantom car. Roshak and Kat also end up at a poker game where Roshak reveals his demonic hand that he keeps hidden by wearing a single glove.
Once again: WAY out in left field.
The movie ends when the phantom car ambushes the trio, takes Kat, and runs Roshak’s El Camino pff the road before taking off. Roshak wakes up and is greeted by the car, which now possesses Kat, and bids him a kind of farewell. He makes a call to a mysterious woman and is given another assignment.
Turns out he is an artifact hunter. Like Warehouse13, but violent and stuff.
VERDICT: Confusticated.
Okay, all in all, this movie wasn’t terrible. A lot of people have bashed it, saying that it moves far too slow, and I can see where they’re coming from on that one. It tends to drag in areas, particularly in scenes intended to flesh the characters out and give them more substance.
The acting is NOT the problem in this movie. Emily Galash, in particular, does extremely well given the writing. Her character is believable, though the accent is a bit forced. It was less “Ya’ll want some sweet tea?” and more “Grab the banjos and lube, paw! We got us another one!” Michael Biesanz pulls off the mysterious Roshak well, making him come off as morose and dangerous.
The sound was also good, for an indie, as were the visual effects. What hurt this movie was the plot. Well, plots. There were a LOT of them.
The writing was the issue, not that it was bad, but in that the writer/director/producer obviously couldn’t decide what story he wanted to tell. So, he just told ALL of them. At once. In pieces.
And didn’t finish them.
Grr.
I mean, I feel his pain. I did the same thing on a book I spent forever writing. The difference is, I picked on story and focused on it, and things are going much smoother now. The same can’t be said for Nightscape, which manages to tell about four different stories from multiple genres and only gives the viewer tidbits of each one. It was almost like watching a movie comprised of nothing but clips and trailers.
For example: WHY did Kat come back to life? She was dead. Like, stone-cold. And what was the real history between Roshak and the phantom car? Where did this old woman at the end come from? Some things could’ve been hinted at in the film, and been a surprise at the end instead of a kick to the proverbial bean bag.
It was an action/fantasy/sci-fi/horror/monster movie.
Dude, really. Pick one.
I’ll post it both here and on the Facebook page. Watch it if you’re curious, but don’t expect anything in particular. It raises a lot of good questions, but answers none of them.
Ever.
And don’t let the pic fool you. I really have NO idea why that thumbnail is being used for the movie.
Youtube.
Argh.
Fail-Flix 