Dead Night (2018)

Expected more

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

This is a contrived story trying to be what? I'm not sure. Flashbacks, interviews, real-time acting, and strange monsters in the woods all crammed together to say nothing, really. I got halfway through the movie, nothing had happened yet of any real note, so I turned it off and spent my time elsewhere.

I do watch some trash, but I generally get a level of something - even if it's poor acting or a shoddy storyline, there's usually something you can grip onto. I just finished watching this and I have no idea what it was about or what happened. The last thing I understood was a family trip to some woods and the family found a woman outside who took advantages of their hospitality, drinking their milk. I've rewound it, paused it, read up on it, asked other people about it. I'm still none the wiser. Don't waste your life on this - watching the movie is a horror in itself.

If you asked me what this movie was about I'm not sure I could tell you. The acting is good so it's definitely not for lack of trying on the actors' part. The tv show within the movie is absolutely pointless. It distracts from what's going on, not that it matters because nothing is ever explained. It's like the writers had five or six good ideas and tried to stick them all into one movie, absolutely failing in execution. Surely someone in production at some point could tell this movie was going to suck because of the plot. I just wished they'd have spoken up and saved me about 90 minutes. I love horror movies but after watching so many terrible ones lately I'm about to give up on them.

Apparently this film underwent heavy re editing just before release. As such it suffers with a nonsense story . The basic premise is a family of four along with a friend of he daughter travel to a remote cabin in the woods with the promise of the areas holistic properties . Once there they seemingly discover an unconscious woman in the snow, and take her back which leads to dire supernatural consequences. On the plus side, it's beautifully shot. The lighting , camera work , sound design and music are all top notch. It's quickly paced and gets straight into the action. There are some truly creepy creature designs, practical gore and violent kills. The cast does a mostly good job, with one notable exception of a scene where the mother deals with whats happened to her family . On the negative side, the film does a poor job of guiding the audience about whats going on in regards to the supernatural elements. Characters just seem to show up out of nowhere, very little or no explanation of what creatures are, their purpose or what they are actually needing victims for. We get a brief exposition dump in regards to Barbara Crampton's character. Also a pet peev of mine, is where at the or near the beginning of a movie, it will show you scenes of what happens at the end of the story and then goes back in time and tell the story via a kind of flashback. It completely undercuts tension as you already know the fate of most characters, and therefore you are just waiting for them to die. This movie kind of does that , by having scenes involving a true crime style TV show giving you the 'official' version of whats happened. Even though events play out differently in the movie compared to whats shown on this faux TV show , it still reveals characters fates and therefore the same issue. I feel in an attempt to be clever the film makers have done themselves an injustice, and would have benefited in telling the story in a more traditional narrative and spent more time setting up more context for whats going on. However what we do see on screen is well done and great effects and shot really well