The Brink starts in 'West Orange, NJ 1931' as inventor Thomas Edison's (Monty Wall) latest creation has unexpected consequences... Jump forward to the present day where engineering student Megan (Rachel Blazer) has tracked down the schematics for Edison's invention which supposedly brings ghosts into our world, Megan convinces two of her student friends Bianca (Heather Chase) & Todd (Jason Flowers) to help her build the machine which they agree to. They set themselves up in an old abandoned & isolated farmhouse 50 miles from anywhere of note & get to work, they quickly discover that Megan's ex boyfriend Leo (Jeff Ryan) has joined the party as the 'voice of reason'. Together they build the machine & turn it on at which point a ghostly figure (Matt Miller) appears holding an axe which it then uses to try & kill Todd, whoever said ghosts were friendly...
Edited, photographed, co-written, produced & directed by Benjamin Cooper I certainly didn't love The Brink but I saw some potential here & thought it was watchable if nothing else. The script by Cooper & John Bowker takes itself extremely seriously & is a little slow to get going which it's main problem, films such as The Brink need to hit you hard straight away & keep you interested throughout, something which the makers of The Brink didn't do & it's over 40 minutes into the film before the four friends turn on the machine by which time it will have probably lost 75% of it's audience who will have either turned it off & stuck Terminator 2 (1991) in the DVD player or switched it over to MTV. Hey, I'm all for a slow measured build up but this is ridiculous & quite frankly there's not that much to build up too! The character's are OK actually & despite being of the teenage variety they didn't annoy me that much, the dialogue was alright & the basic story had potential especially a really neat twist towards the end which a lot more should have been made out of. Generally speaking The Brink isn't a particularly great film & I won't be in any hurry to see it again but there are one or two nice moments here & the story with it's twist had potential which unfortunately wasn't fully realised probably to the low budget & technical restrictions.
Director Cooper does a decent job & I have to say The Brink actually looks like a proper film as opposed to a glorified home movie which is how I think a lot of recently made low budget shot on a camcorder type horror junk that litters video shop shelves look. I wouldn't say it's particularly scary but there are one or two atmospheric moments dotted throughout, there's a distinct lack of gore & violence as well. Someone gets her head sliced in half horizontally with an axe accompanied by a sound effect that resembles someone stepping in some mud & there's a chopped off hand but nothing else worth mentioning.
I'm not sure what sort of budget The Brink had but I'll bet it was pretty low so bear that in mind, at least it's reasonably well made & watchable if nothing else. The Brink has a similar storyline to White Noise (2005) & even though it was apparently shot 2 years before White Noise came out The Brink was released straight-to-video/DVD after. The acting was OK but nothing special.
The Brink was better than I had expected although to be honest that wasn't going to be hard, I can't really recommend it as my head tells me it's a terrible film but my heart says otherwise. I'll leave this one up to you & give it a middle of the road 5 stars out of 10.
Edited, photographed, co-written, produced & directed by Benjamin Cooper I certainly didn't love The Brink but I saw some potential here & thought it was watchable if nothing else. The script by Cooper & John Bowker takes itself extremely seriously & is a little slow to get going which it's main problem, films such as The Brink need to hit you hard straight away & keep you interested throughout, something which the makers of The Brink didn't do & it's over 40 minutes into the film before the four friends turn on the machine by which time it will have probably lost 75% of it's audience who will have either turned it off & stuck Terminator 2 (1991) in the DVD player or switched it over to MTV. Hey, I'm all for a slow measured build up but this is ridiculous & quite frankly there's not that much to build up too! The character's are OK actually & despite being of the teenage variety they didn't annoy me that much, the dialogue was alright & the basic story had potential especially a really neat twist towards the end which a lot more should have been made out of. Generally speaking The Brink isn't a particularly great film & I won't be in any hurry to see it again but there are one or two nice moments here & the story with it's twist had potential which unfortunately wasn't fully realised probably to the low budget & technical restrictions.
Director Cooper does a decent job & I have to say The Brink actually looks like a proper film as opposed to a glorified home movie which is how I think a lot of recently made low budget shot on a camcorder type horror junk that litters video shop shelves look. I wouldn't say it's particularly scary but there are one or two atmospheric moments dotted throughout, there's a distinct lack of gore & violence as well. Someone gets her head sliced in half horizontally with an axe accompanied by a sound effect that resembles someone stepping in some mud & there's a chopped off hand but nothing else worth mentioning.
I'm not sure what sort of budget The Brink had but I'll bet it was pretty low so bear that in mind, at least it's reasonably well made & watchable if nothing else. The Brink has a similar storyline to White Noise (2005) & even though it was apparently shot 2 years before White Noise came out The Brink was released straight-to-video/DVD after. The acting was OK but nothing special.
The Brink was better than I had expected although to be honest that wasn't going to be hard, I can't really recommend it as my head tells me it's a terrible film but my heart says otherwise. I'll leave this one up to you & give it a middle of the road 5 stars out of 10.