DVD And Soon the Darkness
Run time: 91 min
Rating: 5.2
Genres: Crime | Horror | Mystery
Director: Marcos Efron
Writers: Jennifer Derwingson, Marcos Efron
Stars: Amber Heard, Odette Annable, Karl Urban
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Storyline When two American girls on a bike trip in a remote part of Argentina split up and one of them goes missing, the other must find her before her worst fears are realized. Written by prc |
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Plot Keywords: argentina, torture, finding friend, missing friend, can’t trust anyone | |
Details: Country: USA, Argentina, France Release Date: 11 February 2011 (UK) |
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4 comments
50 minutes into the movie I stopped watching because I wasn't able to handle another second of the characters' stupidity. The actors did an OK job with what was given to them. It's the story and the characters that were poorly written. There are a gazillion movies where dumb idiots go backpacking in the middle of nowhere, but many of them are bearable. However the characters here are unrealistically stupid, which is what makes the movie utterly unbelievable and annoying.
here are a few unrealistic moments:
– the chicks went AWOL in backwoods Argentina without telling anyone
– got drunk in the local pub provoking every horny kidnapper there
– got separated in backwoods Argentina because of a chick fight
– when the blond tried to rescue the brunette, they had 10 chances to neutralize the Argentinian idiot and didn't (and yes he is also an idiot in the movie, I'm not just throwing names around)
– when the American guy was pointing the gun at the two amigos, he just decided to turn his back on them, only to get a bullet in the back. At least he was looking somewhat smart, up until that moment…
And to top that, we're supposed to believe that an entire town is conspiring to kidnap tourist girls (which is often the case in this kind of movies.) This aspect is not entirely ridiculous but it's a stretch.
I liked the beginning of the movie with all the scenery, but unfortunately that remained its strongest point.
The actors had nothing to do here. They were stuck with shallow roles with no room for real acting. This was a big step down for Karl Urban and the two females. This type of movies can work, as long as the story and script are believable enough, without having to reduce the characters to imbeciles, which is just frustrating.
And Soon the Darkness is a serviceable "vacation gone bad" thriller. The two lead actresses are VERY pleasant to look at. They bike and sunbathe and run very prettily. But the story is so predictable that it's almost comical, the bad guys and plot twists are apparent from the very beginning, and the protagonists make decisions so stupid that they almost seem to ask for the situation that they get involved in.
You should be very familiar with this kind of plot by now. A pair of attractive young American tourists (Odette Yustman and Amber Heard) get separated from their bike tour group in Argentina, meet some suspicious people, get separated from each other, and then one of them goes missing. They're not the smartest of tourists, that's for sure.
Even if you can stand the by-the-numbers plot (for Odette Yustman, I can accept a LOT of clichés and obvious plot twists), And Soon the Darkness isn't a very thrilling thriller. There's not a lot of creativity or imagination to it, it's just the same movie we've seen before with some new faces. Watch it if you're a fan of Yustman or Heard, but don't expect a lot.
Good things first, some very nice cinematography of the landscapes. Cool looking deserted town that looks like something from a nuclear holocaust. Now that's out of the the way, on to the bad…
Clichéd characters. The Ellie character is just plain annoying and whilst I'm not a prude her behaviour just invited trouble – she's in an unknown country surrounded by strangers and acts like a complete whore. The good guy character hints at some promise but is taken out of the equation too easily. No inventiveness applied here, nothing you haven't seen a million times. Plus the female leads look like famine victims, especially Ellie – neither of them would have had the strength to fight off any kind of attack. I don't know if this is what Hollywood considers sexy nowadays but if so you can keep it.
Only rent if there is absolutely nothing else.
The only good thing about this movie is the editing, the camera work and the sound. The acting is okay, but the plot is shallow. The promise of twists is totally unfulfilled. It is predictable and rather pointless. What a shame. It is one of those movies that seems to have something, but you wait and watch and nothing happens. There is very little to say about the movie. I had to add this filler just so that the review could be accepted for having 10 lines of text. The characterisation is shallow. I suppose the scenery in some of the scenes is rather interesting. But other than that, this is a complete waste of your time.