Kristy (2014)

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

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

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

I thought the lead was Jennifer Lawerence halfway throughout the film. Ashley Greene was unrecognizable. The part that 'really' gets me is that this could all be true events happening to people across the country. It's tefreshing to see a movie that had one strong female lead, 2 female leads is a bonus. I don't want to give anything away, but expect unpredictable outcomes, yet not in the M night Shamalan way

This movie wanted to be edge of your seat, and nerve wracking. I just wasn't feeling it. Through the whole thing you can't help but know that it's all been done before. You've seen it a million times. Within the first few scene's you will be able to predict the entire movie. It doesn't necessarily make it bad, as the movie is for sure watchable, it just takes away some of the appeal for me. Acting was good, and believable. The atmosphere was just blah. A little patchy fog here and there and a night sky just isn't enough to make it creepy, or scary. They very obviously tried to incorporate the soundtrack more than most modern movies do, which I could appreciate, but I also thought they took that in the wrong direction. Never at any point was I rooting for the main actress. I simply didn't care about her. Watch if you're bored. Or don't. You wont be missing anything.

"Kristy" has a young university student, Justine, staying on campus for the Thanksgiving break and forgoing returning home until Christmas. Her rich roommate Nicole, who had originally planned on staying with her, goes to see her family last-minute in Aspen, leaving Justine and the campus security guards alone for the Thanksgiving holiday. After taking a trip to a rural convenience store, Justine runs into a group of young people who seem to want trouble, and upon returning to her empty dorm, finds herself in for one hell of a night.Maybe it's because I love a good college campus slasher, or maybe it's because I'm a grad student who's about to spend his first Thanksgiving alone (albeit in New York City, not in the backwoods in which this film is situated), but I was completely taken in by this film from the beginning. The premise from the get-go is very straightforward: girl alone on a sprawling rural college campus. What could go wrong?The film establishes its villains from the beginning in an internet montage which features video and cryptic text from secret message forums, implicating some sort of new age cult committing ritual killings across the country which are then posted on the internet. While this is admittedly disturbing, I honestly found some of the most interesting the scenes to be within the following exposition of the film, in which Justine finds herself at her own wits, entertaining herself and wandering around the empty college campus. The director, Oliver Blackburn, has a stylish way of illustrating her solitude, and there is something relatable and quietly eerie in this first thirty or so minutes of the film; in spite of the fact that nothing ostensibly scary is happening on screen, there is a very ominous and unnerving mood that gets established; this is what really absorbed me most and got me invested.By the time Justine leaves the campus late in the evening to run to the local convenience store, the audience knows intuitively that her languid Thanksgiving is about to take a wild turn for the absolute worst, and the suspense of it is taut and subtle up to that point. Unfortunately, from there the film begins to temporarily devolve. For having such an understated and ominous exposition, the film is too quick to take the route of a hyperactive thriller, and spends a good thirty minutes devoting itself to flashy cat-and-mouse chase scenes. While some of these are inarguably effective, it is routine and gets old fast. It is not until the last twenty minutes that the film redeems this devolution with an entertaining (albeit also routine) retribution. While all of this is nicely shot and at times startling, I kept thinking to myself how much I missed the subtlety that pervaded the beginning, and in reflection, that was honestly when I was most unnerved. The acting here is surprisingly above standard, with Haley Bennett as the competent lead. Ashley Greene plays the counterpoint female cultist, with Mathew St. Patrick as the likable security guard and James Ransone making an unexpected minor appearance. The production values are high and I'm honestly surprised this film wound up slipping under the radar as it did. Granted, it's not entirely original (comparisons to "The Strangers" and "Them" are almost unavoidable), but it is a technically well-made film and is far more interesting than any horror film to hit theaters this past fall.Overall, "Kristy" is a solid film. I especially commend it for building such a stylish and taut exposition—I honestly can say that the first thirty minutes of the film were among the most inexplicably unnerving I've seen in a long time; quietly creepy even though nothing creepy is happening. As I pointed out, the film does take the cat-and-mouse action a bit too far in my opinion and perhaps is too fast to launch into it, but the final act is satisfying and I was able to overlook this because I found the first act so absorbing and enigmatically spooky. 7/10.

First, I just want to point out that while I like to watch horror and thriller films, I haven't seen every single horror film out there, so I didn't think it was that much of a rip off of other films. However, I do feel that most films like this film are similar anyway. There was one scene that I felt was a complete ripoff of another film: the scene where she was in the kitchen. Did the screenwriter never see Jurassic Park? Are the bad guys velociraptors, easily distracted by noise and not intelligent enough to know better?As for the scare factor: it made me jump a couple of times but I'm not terrified to turn the light off. I equate it to the Halloween or Jason films, which I don't find scary at all.There were a couple of things that I thought were dumb. Like what was with those stupid aluminum foil masks? It's not a very strong material so I just don't understand how they stayed in one piece on their faces the entire time. Also, I just don't get the Kristy thing. I mean, I get that they're a weird online cult that hates pretty girls so they kill them. I just don't get the random violence, but then I've never seen the Strangers or the Purge precisely because I don't get the appeal. Maybe I watch too many cop dramas Criminal Minds where everything is usually tied up in a nice bow at the end really explaining the psychopathy of the bad guys.Overall, if you're bored and you can watch this movie, it's not exactly the biggest waste of time as there are worse movies out there.