Reviews

The good: The movie has an excellent concept for an action/hero film. Sean Riggs(Ray Lazarus) is believable and strangely good as the main character: strangely, because so much of the rest of the acting (or maybe the writing) is so profoundly bad. No, I take that back. If Vin Diesel and Keanu Reeves are allowed to lead action franchises with top billing, Sean Riggs should be given the gold star for his performance in this film.

If you're just out to watch a quick-and-dirty film where people get hit a lot, Lazarus has that. Along with some very eye catching set design and decent sfx. The set and wardrobe designers clearly took financial setbacks as artistic opportunities and it shows: no money to build an entire apartment on your warehouse set? Just hang a bunch of windows as decorations and play it off like an artistic uptown loft. Honestly, kudos.

The bad: Let's start with the run time. While it's true that we have gotten some longer hero movies recently, it's also true that most people didn't like them. For a movie that starts in the middle of the plot and tells us almost nothing about the character, 1 hour and 50 minutes feels.... a bit obnoxious. Action films aren't exactly known for their acting, but the main characters are usually at least able to create some sort of instant emotion in the viewer. This film confusingly turns a mentor into a bad guy, and makes the bad guy so sympathetic that you kinda wonder why he kills people.

The funny : Lines obviously written for a woman speaking English as a second language are delivered in the MOST American Monotone ever. If you can, imagine Carrie Bradshaw saying "My good brother, I lie awake at night thinking of the pain this causes you." You can't make this up.

The redeemer: The guy has a really cool power. And if the film spent more time on his back story and character arc instead of having a weird sidekick with strange sexual energy following him around to continually pad the run time with descriptions of his power, this would be actually be... Pretty amazing (I'm as shocked as you are)

.... But it does. It's like watching some coked out version of Teen Titans where Beast Boy continually pops up to go "Hey Robin, you ha..... ve no powers" that's a bad example "Hey Starfire you can float... Don't forget to float" and "hrnnnnrrghhgaaah when you float.....hfrrrgghhnnnrrhhhaaa I need a cigarette"

It's weird. It's just weird.

What the don't?

The film claims to be based on the novel "the man who fell to earth" but honestly, it's more like Black Lightning, Blade and Spawn had an illicit love child. Which is totally fine. But own it.

TL;DR Should you watch this?

If you enjoy action/hero films, you've already seen them all, and the boys did nothing for you... . If you love seeing what can be done on a less than high budget.... If you sat through the entire fast and furious franchise without any part of your brain going numb... if you like watching people get hit by other people... If you're jonesing so hard for hero films that you might accidentally watch DC's "The Losers" Yes.... And in the case of that last one... Please.

If you're a hero film snob who washes your caviar down with Evian wine (aged 100 years) while watching Black Panther, Guardians of the Galaxy, and the Avengers Franchise in an endless loop (no judgement) probably not.

This review contains one or two spoilerish statements. Look, I loved this movie. I loved the visuals, I loved the way it was sympathetic to the ghost (because ghosts are people too). But I have to foul it because my two most hated tactics were used far too liberally:

1. Using the movie's description to explain the movie's plot. "The stock market crashes and a distraught father kills his employees and his wife then turns the gun on his daughters"....am I the only one who saw absolutely none of this actually IN the movie and, having not read the write-up, was left wondering....why in the name of creation did this dude up and try to kill his kids? Also, if this movie is set during the stock market crash of the 1920's, which it certainly looks like in the beginning, why is it that five years later the girls' uncle is wandering around the current era? A little continuity would have been nice, especially for those of us who love period clothing.

2. Using the storyboard to tell the story. The 11 minutes of children's drawings at the beginning were utterly pointless. I could have done without the scene where dad drives the girls off a cliff, finds some cabin, and tries to kill his kids by shooting them in the head, too. Realistically, if the movie had started with the brother trying to find his nieces and just EXPLAINING to his girlfriend that they had gone missing, nothing would be lost. Except a lot of confusion.

The CGI was cool and I really loved the mini actress who played Victoria. She had a great range but unfortunately, couldn't carry off the entire plot by herself. The brother is missing from 80% of the plot and it seems like he's only there to show us that....to....I have no idea. It's pretty clear that the actor doesn't know why he's there either. I don't think it's his fault that he has like 11 lines and none of them further the movie in the slightest. At least he got more lines than dad, who has one, spoken in a weird dream the brother has about him: another scene the movie could have done without.

This movie seems to be "about" the girls' stepmom, the contrast between her and mama. At the end of the movie, I ended up feeling sorry for the kid who went with her instead of the ghost, since throughout the movie she proves herself to be an unemployed, irresponsible, self-absorbed and generally uncaring addict. Literally the worst mother imaginable. If this movie was going for my heartstrings, it missed.

I feel like "mama" was the only sympathetic character. And they killed HER off before the movie even started. The end result was a movie that is also a bad joke. What happens when a Canadian and Spanish film maker get together? The story is overly complicated, overly emotional, disjointed, and too long.