Speak No Evil (2013)

That was an excellent one.

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

I had to register just so that I could comment on this movie. It is utter trash and if I can help one soul, PLEASE do not watch this. Watching movies on Netflix, I usually do a search on IMDb first, and if the movie is at least 5.0/10, I will watch it. For some reason, I didn't search this movie in IMDb.com before watching. What a mistake. With a 3.7/10 rating at the time of this post, this was 1 hour of my life I'd like back. Even though I posted that there aren't any spoilers, I think there is 1 spoiler...If you rented or started watching this on Netflix, that is a guaranteed evening spoiler.No character development. No dialogue. No rational thinking by characters...nothing. But the actors/actresses did their best with what they had, and I'd have to give them a 5/10 for that. Everything else should be a zero, but the lowest I can rate is 1...unfortunately.

The first minute of this movie is promising it. It has the only moments of horror and suspense you find in this entire movie. If you turned it off from there you'd walk away with a better experience.The characters in this movie are all EXTREMELY annoying. However acting from the kids is by far the greatest horror of this film. Their insentient never-ending screaming is obnoxious and rude to the viewers. Do we really need 10 straight minutes of kids yelling and screaming in unison?? The special effects consists of motor oil dripping from the kids mouths when they aren't screaming. The other scenes ramble on pointlessly. After a while fast forwarding becomes essential. Don't waste your time.

For such a small budget, this film delivers fairly well. The actors made do with what they were given and carried it along smoothly.Acting isn't the only spice required in a good film. Plot is important also, and here it's thin at best. I actually like that they didn't bother to try explaining things. It gets pretty cliché to me when the writers throw in some convenient explanation delivered by some Native American medicine man, or some psychic who is drawn into the area by the bad vibes, or the crazy old priest who used to read up on demonology in his early days... You've seen it. They didn't bother with it this time, and that was actually fairly refreshing to me.Unfortunately, those are the only two points I can make that work for this film. The rest is fairly sub par. Overall, the film fails to pull you in because it superficially makes use of everything else. There is no depth to the development of the characters or treatment of the environment.What do I mean by that? Let me give some examples.For starters, the director relies heavily on shaky camera work. This sort of thing is designed to pull you into the action, but at it's worst it fails to give you a lasting impressions because you haven't really seen anything at all! You've only seen shaky flashes of action, bits and pieces of character expression, etc. Nothing sticks because you fly through it too quickly. Hence, it means very little to the viewer.Secondly, the sound is heavy and brooding, ALL THE TIME. Despite what some reviewers say about things starting slowly, the reality is that in terms of music and ambient sound, there is simply no room to breathe at all. From start to finish it's the same thing. It's like having a weight put on your shoulders all day long, after a while you get used to it and then you don't think about it any more. So without that change of ambiance, everything sort of blends together, nothing is distinct and new.Thirdly, the children are under represented. Even though this movie is about possessed children, they seem to fall by the wayside in terms of importance. They are all dressed the same. They all have the same make-up on. They all act the same. Most all the girls are blonds, most all the boys have longish hair (with the exception of one boy who seems to have a mohawk or something). Each kid, including the heroine's daughter, gets precious little screen time. Only perhaps two children in the entire movie get any lines (and they are short). Their faces are almost never really focused on, and even when they are the make-up gets in the way. Couple that with the shaky camera work and you almost never really truly see them at all! ***Small spoiler included in next line*** What we have here is the objectification and eventual dehumanization of all the children in the film. It's easy to kill what you don't consider worthy of your affection. It makes it a simple thing to dismiss the fact that children are being killed, and if you don't care about them then there's no real point to the movie.

This may look like some generic horror, but it's better than that. I just expected a dull para/slasher that I could stick on in the background whilst doing some real-life stuff.I kind of missed the beginning, this film started to grab me about 20 minutes in, there's some nice touches in the camera work - more than competent, visually this is a cut above the rest, the soundtrack tethers well to the "action" - another thing I liked, there was a much more low-key approach to the meat and gristle of the movie and some very effective costuming.Would watch again :)