Reviews

LandLocked is not a great film, but it is decent. LandLocked is not a horror movie!

The story is of some brothers dealing with the loss of their father. The youngest son, Mason, finds the old family videos and a weird camera that allows him to see into the past. The cast seem to be actual family members and the video appears to be old family movies.

Altogether, it is a bit too pretentious and vague. Trying to rely too much on metaphors and symbolism that will fly right over most viewer's heads, as it did mine.

So what happened in LandLocked? Spoilers here. My theories ranged from aliens (the lights in the sky), Mason already being dead (the red tape has a date of 3 days after he was born), to the family covering up something (perhaps Mason's accidental death). None of these ideas appear to be correct. In fact, it looks like they were trying to point out that living in the past at the expense of living your life is a bad idea... which was not in the least bit obvious to me.

It's the power of the 'demon'.

It should be either super powerful, able to telekinetically throw the woman around before it possesses her and later able to fill the elevator with blood to drown them, or it needs to possess a person in order to kill the rest and can't break down the door to an apartment without a physical body...

Which is it? In this case it was both, and that's the problem. If it is all powerful enough to throw the first woman around why not the little girl, or the other woman?

That is what's wrong with this film, though in my opinion it was pretty good even with that in mind.

I'd also like to point out, I am getting really tired of these opening scenes that are the ending of the film. Directors, you are stupid if you think this is something we want to see. The beginning that is the ending is overdone and makes me think you don't believe the rest of your film will make me want to watch it until the ending without having the need to tie that little loop together. Stop it. This technique reeks of amateur hour.

There is a lot going for this film. From a special effects and cinematic perspective this film is great. The action is pretty good. The acting from everyone was excellent.

The story is bad. Very, very bad. It seems the director saw a chance to remake the original with a modern team. The plot and the story are where the movie falls flat. The motivation of many characters is clearly missing throughout the film. You will be asking yourself, why did this character show up here, now? Why did they enter this conversation. How did they find themselves at this place. It's like they just left out key scenes that would have tied these events together better. Then, on the opposite end, the modernizing of the script alludes to events so obviously that the director is trying to hold your hand and drag you through the story. Lines of dialogue are so scripted to be unnatural that it really breaks the illusion.

Read on for spoilers of specific examples of these things. Early on, they explain that executive of the corporation that is the 'leader' of the mission lives on a 'life boat' part of the ship. Then they show a table/device that obviously has medical purposes and explain how rare it is... The 'life boat' is clearly going to be ejected at some point. The medical device is clearly going to be used at some point. In other words they think you are a moron and need to have your hand held to ever comprehend the futuristic theme of this movie. It's disgusting.

Then, you have the motivations of certain characters. For some completely unknown reason they made the 'leader' act like she is insane. They made the robot betray the crew in ways that could easily have ruined his ulterior motivation given by his 'father'. Basically they hoped to trick the viewers with nonsensical sub plots to keep us on our toes. Idiotic.

Doesn't even come close to touching the amazing story of Alien, or the actors that brought those characters to life and made them feel like real people.

They made so many mistakes in this movie. First, twenty years have passed in real life. For no reason they decide to make the setting 60 years into the future. This is probably entirely an excuse to cut Laurence Fishburne out of the character list. However, this didn't hurt Keanu Reeves because he looks, acts, and moves like 60 years really have passed. Then, they screwed up by reviving an already defeated bad guy, Agent Smith, whose story lines were the reason Matrix 2 and 3 were nowhere near as good as 1. In doing something so idiotic as reviving yet another character whose actor is still alive and well, you would think they would use that actor again for that role. Nope. They weren't willing to negotiate the timing of filming with Hugo Weaving, who was very willing to reprise his role. Strike two. So, they screw up the timing for no reason, and two of the major characters get replaced for no reason, and where do you think they will go? All new ground? Nope. They rewind back to the beginning with horrible flashbacks from the original films like one of those rerun episodes of a tv show. Well, it's been twenty years, so I guess not everyone remembers everything about the films. Still a major flaw that deserves strike three for certain. However, I watch bad movies all the time, what made this one so bad that it was only two stars? They actually hired Jada Pinkett Smith to reprise the role of Niobe. Sounds great, right? Right? She did an excellent job in the originals, but because they set the timing of the film 60 years into the future, they had her reprise her role as 60 years older. She did a horrible job pretending to be forty years older than she actually is, and the makeup didn't do her justice either.

Story 1/10 Visuals 5/10 Acting 1/10 Direction 0/10

In conclusion, this is by far the biggest cash grab and worst reboot sequel I have ever seen. Don't waste your time and money if you care even a little bit about a decent story in the films you watch. Even the action was pathetic. The only good thing in the entire film is when the character, Bugs, says, "What's up, Doc?" That's it.

Seriously, could they make it any more unbelievable than to have an out in space lightsaber battle with voice conversation and screaming?

Well, they can have the insane bad girl say, "We will bring order to the galaxy," followed by, "Those peace loving rebels." Which is it, do you want to end war or not.

Obviously this episode was made by a group of people that have very little knowledge of anything not Otaku related.

This film lacks quality in a lot of places.

At the beginning the mother is in handcuffs being interviewed by the police. The detective's handgun is sitting on the desk directly in front of her, inches from her handcuffed hands. That has got to be the most idiotic police officer in the history of police. Nope, it's just bad film making.

Being a found footage film they follow the same guidelines of cameras that have interference sometimes, except these cameras have that same interference a lot of times for no reason. It is obvious that the person responsible for deciding when to include that interference doesn't understand why other found footage films use this special effect. This being the only special effect in the entirety of the movie and it being used too often without emphasizing the moments when it should have been used, it's just bad film making.

I found it entirely unbelievable that Alex and Thomas had no idea what Tarot cards are. While I feel it is likely that many people haven't seen them in person, at least one of the two has got to have seen a book, film, or tv show that showed tarot cards.

At one point in the film Thomas and Alex decide to place a hidden camera in the boy's room, and they get the boy's mother's permission. Later on they show a family video from a camera hidden in the exact same place which was put there by the mother. Obviously it is exactly the same camera. This shows that they didn't think the continuity of that action through.

The ending lacked any sort of special effects, and the acting for a telekinetic/physical fight was not something these actors could pull off well. This made the ending extremely cheesy, which is unfortunate because if they had pulled off a good quality ending they could have pulled this movie up in quality a lot. They should have omitted the magic and gone with a knife or something easier to act out like that.

So, to sum it up, this film made a lot of major mistakes that simply ruin the story and take you out of the experience.