Paintball (2009)

Good concept, poorly executed.

Did you people see the same film I saw?

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Group of twenty-somethings believe they have signed up for escapism jungle adventure game with paintball weapons and combat gear. What they aren't aware of is that this isn't any ordinary game: but a game of survival, literal survival. Barely distinguishable, nondescript characters running around in the wilderness just hoping they won't be killed. There is a green and orange team, but among them is a hunter wearing a thermal mask. The hunter's anonymity and freedom to move among the players provides him a distinct advantage, but when he goes too rogue, the company which funds this snuff adventure (they have an even wealthier clientèle who pay to see people die, watching from inside a specific building or underground) consider him just as worthy of erase.Clever concept is an adventure version of Hostel. The more violent bits are scene through the black and white thermal camera of the hunter (his most worthiest adversary--the lead picked to guide the green team, ultimately self-preserving and willing to betray his own team to live--gets his throat slit, with the hunter planting mini-bombs under a protective vest, stepping on him, causing them to explode; another moment has the hunter bashing a player's face in with the butt of his rifle as the poor guy walked into a set of bear traps). Boxes that are supposed to help the players at one point cause harm (an "acid bullet" put in the wrong gun explodes in the face of a player). The leader of the team actually takes the vest of a player after he's wounded and hobbles accidentally into a wire trap that hangs him upside down! The irony of the dead certificates is rather wicked at the end. It is set up ahead of time the reason behind the players' demises, as if none of them would ever be able to make it out alive. The whole point of this is to provide significant deaths for an affluent and depraved viewing audience (might take some viewers back to The Purge: Anarchy). When one female victim is trapped in a tunnel, a glass floor under her is an actual location for people to watch the hunter murder her! A voice across a walkie-talkie gives out instructions when motivated by her superiors to organize the game so that it entertains the clients.The use of a machete motivates different responses within the story (it impales a player accidentally when the one who uses it is just trying to protect herself, while another has the leader of the green team purposely impaling an orange team member multiple times in anger), how the thermal camera can be used against the hunter (in the main room of the company's building, where Anna finds the death certificate files, uses the glass to hide herself among those watching behind it), and the taking apart of a rifle to kill the hung-upside-down player are among the more memorable bits in the film. A horror/action hybrid, this is, and should be of interest to those who look for something in the "Most Dangerous Game" vein.

If there's one thing I've learnt from contemporary American horror films, it's that you can't trust foreigners, especially Eastern Europeans, who, at the first available opportunity, will sell you into slavery, harvest your organs, use you in bizarre scientific experiments, torture you for the amusement of others, or in the case of Paintball, trick you into becoming human targets in a ruthless manhunt. Still, with characters as dumb and obnoxious as those in this film, folk who willingly allow themselves to be hooded, shackled and driven to an unknown destination by complete strangers, I say have at it, Mr Johnny Foreigner—by all means slaughter these irritating, whiny, gung-ho morons for sport—you'll be doing the human race a favour!The whole 'survival game for real' idea is hardly original (Nico Mastorakis did the same thing decades earlier with The Zero Boys, which was quickly followed by Masterblaster), but that doesn't mean it doesn't still have the potential to be hugely entertaining; sadly, Paintball blows it in almost every conceivable way, the cocky characters just begging for a bullet between the eyes only being the start of the problem. In addition to making the viewer not give a damn whether anyone lives or dies, the film suffers from lousy acting, a lack of decent action, and dreadful direction from Daniel Benmayor, who opts for a horrible wobbly cam technique and the use of POV for the killer, neither of which work particularly well: the frantic camera-work makes it hard to follow the action while the potentially gory POV kills are seen through some sort of high-tech thermal imaging goggles that display everything in monochrome and negative, meaning that the death scenes are frustratingly short of the red stuff (blood looks like milk!).After much tedium, frantic running around the woods, and screaming, the final survivor (a woman, naturally) is inexplicably given assistance by the people controlling the hunt, and faces off against the killer in a derelict building where the script introduces a dumb 'deus ex machina'—a case inexplicably chained to a wall—that comes in very handy in defeating the enemy. As the winner of the game, the woman is allowed to walk free, but in a very confusing final scene, is seen being pursued down a railway track. Here's hoping she got flattened by a train!

For starters, I'm going to start out by saying that i do not generally watch movies in this genre. Survival horrors, slashers, and other movies made to bring out fear and emotions like it are not really my thing. but i do love paintball, so i watched this.I think that the ratings given this film are too low. It was a well made movie. Of course most of the characters are whiny little wimps and have no idea what they're doing, but some of them are brand new to the sport, and don't even know what to expect from regular paintball.When David starts taking charge, it feels good to see that someone is not an idiot. What they really needed was some better dialogue. Or actually, they needed some dialogue period, because i don't count screeching as dialogue. the cinematography was quite shaky, even in some shots where there was no action, but it was okay. I got pulled into the story, and was on the edge of my bed (my television's in my bedroom) when some of the suspenseful parts were going on. For the "problems" with the gore, I'm glad they made most of it through the hunters infrared goggles. I STILL thought it was too much gore in some scenes, but as i said before, I'm do not usually like these movies. There were some issues with the plot that i had. It was all okay until they got to the part where they say that the viewers are paying to watch death. Its a little cheesy. I think it would have been much more compelling if they were trying to find the best soldiers the world has to offer, or something along those lines. For being relatively low budget (i think) and made by a new producer, i thought it was pretty damn good. i was entertained. i would recommend watching it if you don't usually watch movies in the genre, or if you haven't seen any of the movies that people say it ripped off. 7/10

How's this for a premise? Set up an octet for a PREDATORS-style survival game aimed at a non-subtitle-enabled English-speaking audience. To save money, pick half of the so-called "Green" paintball team from the ranks of low-paid, English-illiterate European extras. Then dub in some loop group dialog for this extra-expendable quartet and kill them off quickly enough that the movie won't be ruined for viewers too drunk or high to realize that things these four say are lip-synched worse than a Milli Vanilli video. Hopefully, this subgroup of easily entertained viewers also won't notice all the awkward "blocking" caused by rampant miscommunication between cast and cast or cast and crew. While you're at it, put in some garbage footage intended to simulate the "night vision" of the stalker, since this is sure to disguise the fact that PAINTBALL is edited more haphazardly than half-stirred hash. Who cares if key death scenes are missing? Who cares if the climax is lame? Who cares if the post-climactic scene of a girl running down railroad tracks makes absolutely no sense? You've already taken your euros and run--quickly--to the bank. (If you had really cared about us the least little bit, you'd have added some campy songs into this sorry mix!)