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DVD 13Hrs
 Run time: 81 min Rating: 4.5 Genres: Action | Horror Director: Jonathan Glendening Writers: Adam Phillips Stars: Isabella Calthorpe, Tom Felton, Gemma Atkinson |
| Storyline Sarah Tyler returns to her troubled family home in the isolated countryside, for a much put-off visit. As a storm rages outside, Sarah, her family and friends shore up for the night, cut off from the outside world. But something comes out of the driving rain and darkness. Something that holds a dark secret so devastating that, in one night, it could wipe out the entire family. Written by Anonymous |
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| Plot Keywords: storm, attic, power outage, dog, barn | |
| Details: Country: UK Release Date: 28 August 2010 (UK) |
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4 comments
This movie is not the greatest as you would guess with not a very good cast nor an original story line. To start with the acting. The actors performances were all average apart from Isabella Calthorpe's, her acting was awful. Directing was average, nothing special.
The film starts of with Sarah Tyler coming back to England from the United States after a long time. We find out about each of the characters personalities and their previous relationships before Sarah left for USA.
Then the action starts with the creature appearing and the family trying to survive. Trying alternate solutions to find an escape or protect themselves from the creature.
The ending was surprising. It could have been better. No explanation was given on why such events happened which was frustrating and made things seem pointless and too simple.
Pretty gross scenes with gore. Stupid decisions and bad storyline. Maybe you can have a laugh with friends while watching this but I don't think it's much more than that.
I saw this at FrightFest in London and was engaged right up to the final reel where things came a bit unglued.
The film deals with an estranged daughter coming home to visit her father and step-family at their ancestral manor. A building storm cuts off the power and an aborted party in the hay-barn is moved to the house, where the family discover that something *else* has crept into the house ahead of them.
There follows a horror genre cat-and-mouse chase around the house interior where the group of youths are steadily picked off by the monstrous invader during their efforts to contact the authorities and call for help.
Much of this section of the film is quite tense and well-played and this second reel is where I found most enjoyment. The creature responsible for the mounting chaos is never shown (other than a clever Gollum-style silhouette in one shot) and works for the film rather than against, leaving imagination to fill in the blanks.
Only in the final act of the movie do we learn the origin of the creature (although this particular twist is not difficult to see coming much earlier in the movie) and see it in more detail, which is where things fall down a bit.
When budgets are tight, prosthetics and animatronics typically suffer – the visual effects for the creature are a bit wobbly (which shouldn't really matter that much if the editing is tight or evasive) and although the body count is high and the corpses are suitably eviscerated and mangled (with probably the best effects of the movie) somehow the revelation of the responsible party left me feeling flat. Many of the actual murders also happen off-screen or in cut-away, which was another source of frustration for a horror fan.
Ultimately, this is a decent movie and the second act is where all the tension is rooted, but I found the ending lacking something. At the festival, the director explained they only had something like 18 days to shoot which would certainly impact on the final film.
If you like monster movies and have a free hour and a half, you could do a lot worse than watch 13Hrs.
I think the integrity of IMDb has gone to sh_t because of fake posts, fake ratings by those involved in the film.
I rented this one, seeing a >8/10 review from some 25 people. I can't say it was anything but a waste of money. I'm a huge horror film fan, and watch anything that comes out and doesn't get abysmal ratings on here. I had to watch this one in fast forward. The initial dialog, and characters were interesting. Acting seemed fine. Once the creature and killings enter in, we are left with incoherent camera flashes, and a claustrophobic mess. When we finally see the creature, we understand why they decided to hide it till the end. The quality of the creature effects definitely are the bad. The story the ugly.. and the acting, and characters… the good.
The film had a lot of things done very well. Others very badly.
Not having a clue what this movie was about prior to sitting down to watch it, I could be nothing but surprised.
The movie started out a bit slow, but was quick to pick up in pace and start blasting onwards. There was a lot of thrills and suspense building up not far too into the movie, and that was what was working the best for this particular movie.
Actually the cast did a good job with their roles, and each brought something good, solid and unique to the movie with their individual roles. Not award-winning performances, but still very good shows of talents here.
There weren't really any twists to the storyline, except for one that was revealed at the very end, but you saw it coming, so it wasn't a moment of utter surprise by then.
I am not going to spoil it here and say what the movie is about, but trust me, "13 Hrs" will keep you riveted to your chair throughout the entire feature. You just want to see what waits around the next corner and see what is going to happen.
Though, honestly, I do not see this movie as having enough value or weight in it for a second viewing. Having seen it once, is enough, and I doubt it that I will ever be returning to watch it a second time around. It was good, just not that good. But for a non-Hollywood movie, they actually pulled it off well enough. The movie had definite potential and could have been so much more. Now, I am not saying it is a bad movie, not at all. They just didn't get as much out of the movie as they could have, which actually is a shame.