VANish (2015)

I love this movie so much

One of my all time favorites.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Delightfully off-key. You rarely knew whether you should have been happy or whether you should have been sad at the end of nearly every scene. The story was weird, in a cool way, told at a good tempo, and engagingly acted, believable enough. The 'gore' presentations kinda echoed the contrapuntal style of the story telling. And I liked the characters. All well beyond the clichés of most box office films over even the not-too-distant past. I enjoyed watching it. (Probably No. 1 over other recent releases.) But all that is just me. You well may have a different take.

OK so the first half hour of this movie was tough to get through because the acting was very poor - or so I thought...After watching the whole movie I rate the acting quite good, especially from Maiara Walsh, who was brilliant. Initially the two guys in the van appeared to be complete half wits and I thought it was the acting but thinking about it, some of it was the characters they were playing - who were morons...Considering the very limited sets and budget, this movie delivers an enjoyable ride. Some of the violence effects are second rate and some acting is below par but generally good - and as I have mentioned - Maiara played a good part - and is drop dead gorgeous to boot :) 6 stars - OK this should really have got a 5 stars but gave it an extra one because of Maiara Walsh :)

Greetings from Lithuania."VANish" (2015) is sometimes laughably bad, sometimes laughably gory, sometimes laughably stupid but most important, never good. The plot is very simple, and not really engaging. To be honest, i somehow managed to watch it till the end, till the very bad end. There was a shoot out scene at the end that has to be one of the worst shoot out scenes in the movie history - seriously, watch it closely and you will spot some very serious errors in continuity, terrible editing and even worst directing. What was the point of this whole movie? Overall, to think that someone managed to spend a lot of money for creating this stuff and hoping to get it back kinda makes me want shake my head in disbelieve. The only think that was kinda nice in this movie actually was Bryan Bockbrader's acting. That i think was not bad performance at all, and you clearly see that this guy has some natural talent, although the material is wrong to make any real judgments. Overall, you can safely skip this flick and save some 1 h and 17 min.

(Not sure if there is actually any spoilers in my review but I always tick the box just in case I write something that someone thinks is a spoiler; so they can't report me)This movie is what I would expect from Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez if they were to ever co-direct and co-write a movie. It has a simalair feel to some of their movies and also it has the kind of ultra violence that you'd find in Tarantino's movies (the kind that some people feel is out of place and unnecessary; but it's never bothered me and I kinda enjoy it in a weird way). Additionally, the screenplay is very tarantinoesque and is written in a smart way and has a simalair style to Reservoir Dogs. I'm not gonna go into the plot cause you can read that on the IMDb page anyway, but the actors who play the captors and the actress who plays the captive, are the people whom we spend most of the movie with. They are all unknown as far as I know but they all deliver solid performances and bring their characters to life in a really good way; thanks to the good writing the actors do have something to work with and the characters do have more dimensions than one e.g. one of the captors always seems nervous about everything and has a drug problem and is haunted by memories from his past when he was in the army. You may have noticed the names Tony Todd and Danny Trejo on the poster who both have top billing but are both only in the movie for just under five minutes. However, both actors are on top form and make their scenes memorable; Tony Todd plays a cop who pulls the captors over halfway through the movie and Danny Trejo arrives in the last five minutes of the movie and plays the leader of a Mexican drug cartel who is also the father of the woman being held captive in the van. A hell of a lot happens throughout the movie and there is so much more to the plot than is suggested by the IMDb plot synopsis but to give loads of details would be to spoil the story. The thing that amazed me the most about this movie was that 95% of it takes place in side the captors van and yet the director still manage to maintain a good atmosphere and the movie can be very tense in places. The only real complaint I have is that the practical effects are a but iffy e.g. someone's head gets blown off and someone else's fingers get chopped off and both times the effects look cheap, although I am glad they avoided using CGI because on the film's small budget it would have looked even worse, however ultimately this doesn't matter too much and doesn't make the movie worse.On a final note I would definitely recommend this to fans of Tarantino and Rodriguez and also to those who enjoy a good thriller. Also ignore the fact that this has been put into the 'horror' genre on IMDb, it has no horror elements and doesn't resemble a horror movie in anyway (believe me, horror is my favourite genre).