Just got back from the Maldives again.....heaven will try to get round to r/r/c
Just got back from the Maldives again.....heaven will try to get round to r/r/c
Member since:21.07.2005
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Recently my husband and I have fallen for ordering DVD rentals based on the trailers we have seen and Paradise Lost landed on our doorstep last night and we decided to put it on.
With no real stars we were hoping that this film offered a thrilling storyline and we thought it would be either similar to The Beach or Hostel so what did I really think?
The film begins on a bus full of tourists in Brazil with an bus driver making his way up a steep and winding mountain in an erratic manner whilst picking his nose! It is at this point that we are introduced to Alex (Josh Duhamel) who is complaining about the driver and the manner in which he is driving the bus as he feels uneasy as if there is likely to be a crash.
Alex is accompanying is sister Bea (Olivia Wilde) and her friend Amy (Beau Garrett) on their first trip abroad and he obviously finds this extremely boring as his character
at first comes across as very dull and uninteresting. Pru (Melissa George) is another character we notice on the bus journey engrossed in her book and its not until the driver almost hits some pedestrians on the pathway throwing the bus onto a steep hill all the passengers can do is to escape before it tumbles down. Alex, Amy, Bea and Pru make friends with cheeky cockney brothers, Finn (Desmond Askew) and Liam (Max Brown) as the try to collect their scattered belongings that have been left as the bus rolled down the hill.
As the passengers narrowly escape, it soons dawns on them that there is a long wait for the next bus, 10 hours in fact and when Amy decided to take some snaps of a young boy whilst they are waiting the parents get angry and an arguement develops, just in time two girls pass by with cocktails and as Pru asks them where they found the cocktails they are directed to a cabana bar on the beach and rather than wait around for the bus with the other passengers, they make their way down to the beach bar to enjoy a swim and some alcohol.
A few hours later and the small group decide to stay at this beach for a few days as the rooms are cheap and they seem to have everything they need, so they enjoy a night of drinking and dancing until it all turns sour the following morning and they wake up to find they have been drugged and all of their posessions taken and the next bus is not for another 2 days and when Alex find a motorcycle that belonged to a swedish couple they met the evening before he starts to wonder exactly what is going on and whilst asking the owner of the house whose bike it is, Liam spots a young boy wearing Alex's baseball cap and sets about chasing him to retrieve it and hopefully their other belongings but when a child throws a rock at them, Liam retaliates and hits the child on the back of the head leading to a huge scene with the residents of the village and its local boy Kiko (Agles Steib) who comes to their rescue offering them a place to hide away from all the trouble until the next bus arrives in town.
The group decide to follow Kiko and accept his help little do they know that Kiko is not all he seems and he is involved in a very nasty set up.
This film seemed fairly promising at the beginning although it took its time to get to the main point of the story. The storyline is somewhat shameful and is as we predicted a cross between the Beach and Hostel but this film is certainly less entertaining, the storyline is poor the fact that the group find themselves trusting someone that they barely know to a house in the middle of nowhere, when they could stay in the run down village full of people. To say this film is a let down is an understatment because for the first 40 minutes you really feel this film is going to be something and offer something a little different to your normal horror movie but unfortunately this is a gory horror that will have you flinching in places but a twist in the story is unlikely its predictable what will happen once the story kicks in and its most likely when you will switch off.
Definately a movie you should avoid as its definately not high class entertainment.
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Production Year: 1984 - Horror - Director: Joe Dante - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring: Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, Hoyt Axton, Polly Holliday, Frances Lee McCain, Judge Reinhold, Corey Feldman
Production Year: 2002 - Horror - Director: Danny Boyle - Original Language: English - Classification: 18 years and over - Starring: Cillian Murphy, Megan Burns, Noah Huntley, Christopher Eccleston, Marvin Campbell, Brendan Gleeson
Advantages: Superb acting (from young cast), Brilliant locations, Language barrier creates suspense Disadvantages: No defined storyline, Too similar to 'Hostel' etc, Unrealistic Horror Movie
tendencies1990 18.06.2007 (24.06.2007)
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Review of ParadiseLost (DVD)