Zero expectations going into this, I just happened to see the disc on the shelf, saw Rainn Wilson in it and had to give it a go. Sadly, it lives down to those expectations pretty well. It's an interesting enough premise, two kids running from someone and that someone crashes through a covered well and is trapped. Now those kids have an ethical dilemma, help the guy but then probably get busted for the things they were up to or let him rot and face the moral consequences. It's the kind of movie I would love to see take a narrow focus, barely leaving the sight of incident, a dialogue heavy back and forth, a game of cat and mouse while the trapped tries to talk the boys into helping him...
That is so not this movie. Of course there just has to be a twist at the end and I found it pretty obnoxious and fairly obvious as the movie progressed. Beyond that though, it really falls hard into one of the more annoying tropes of recent years. That of utterly sadistic, murderous demon-children. Not just a bully, but a prepubescent serial killer. In this instance, it also happens to be the kid's brother and it's just so obnoxious to have a prominent character with his only defining trait being that he's a monstrous hellspawn. The movie attempts to deal with this somewhat, but it lacks the conviction to actually stick the landing.
All in all, this feels like a tv mainstay just waiting for circulation. It's not aggressively bad, it just lacks the follow through to really hit the good bits.
That is so not this movie. Of course there just has to be a twist at the end and I found it pretty obnoxious and fairly obvious as the movie progressed. Beyond that though, it really falls hard into one of the more annoying tropes of recent years. That of utterly sadistic, murderous demon-children. Not just a bully, but a prepubescent serial killer. In this instance, it also happens to be the kid's brother and it's just so obnoxious to have a prominent character with his only defining trait being that he's a monstrous hellspawn. The movie attempts to deal with this somewhat, but it lacks the conviction to actually stick the landing.
All in all, this feels like a tv mainstay just waiting for circulation. It's not aggressively bad, it just lacks the follow through to really hit the good bits.