3/10
Low Budget Sci Fi
24 November 2016
The music was so corny I almost abandoned the video immediately. It was extremely bad and amateurish. It almost makes the film unwatchable, like something in a high school video project.

The video is broken into 10-minute segments, each with opening and closing credits and a recap of the previous segment. This is tedious.

The science is pretty shaky, but at one point went completely off the rails. They decide some stones point up permanently aligned with a star in Ursa Major. Vertical stones in England would never align so far north. Further, no English stones would be permanently aligned anywhere because the earth rotates and revolves around the sun.

In general, the science is utterly embarrassing. It would be too silly even for an Austin Powers movie.

I think the writer went to a math library and grabbed snippets and formulae at random to include in the script. Given that there is so much of this and that it is central to the plot, I think they could have hired a real (or at least student) mathematician to compose some plausible dialogue.

The movie is carried by Matthew, a scientist's ten-year-old son. He is unusually intelligent, curious and spunky. He is a considerably better actor than any of the adults in the movie. The acting, in general, has a stagy feel with lots of contrived exposition.

They show you something strange, then let you sit with it for a long time before giving their explanation. It does a good job that way of building suspense.

The way they build unease is by showing you very ordinary things, but that just should not happen, like a giant stone appearing in a different place. There is almost nothing that would count as a special effect, other than possibly a dissolve.

Despite all the negative things I said about the movie, it was engaging. I cared about the characters. It was creepy. The very last reel was high camp. I expected the villain to play Toccata and Fugue on an organ.
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