The Other Side (2006)

So much average

Don't listen to the negative reviews

The first must-see film of the year.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

I got about 1/2way through this movie before I looked up the director Gregg Bishop, and found he's made The Siren, another fantastic and very original movie. Makes sense. I can't think of another first feature where the director tells the story this well with action and story. Tons of throwaway lines, tons of clever use of old horror tropes, I had a blast watching this one, and I'm looking forward to more awesome features from Gregg Bishop!!!

When people say a low-budget movie is crap, others argue back, "well, they only had so much money." Well, I disliked this movie, and it had nothing to do with production value. It doesn't cost money to write a good screenplay, only time. If a special effect looks bad or a shot looks off, THAT is a result of money, and I forgive that. When the acting is bad, the dialog deplorable, and the plot convoluted, that is NOT due to budget. I read a review of this film that went into detail about the plot of the film. It did a better job of describing the movie than the movie did in executing it. One major quibble I had with the plot is that it ignores what could have been an interesting subplot: The "heroes" in this film are souls that have escaped from hell. This implies that all the escapees have been damned, but we are supposed to root for them. We don't meet ONE escaped soul that is portrayed as someone who deserved to be in hell. Instead, it infers that all in hell are really nice folks who just did one little thing wrong. Should we be rooting for people who did something worthy of being sent to hell? This movie ignores this little point, which I don't think is so little. This film wants to be THE TERMINATOR, and rips off many elements, right down to the score that accompanies every action sequence. The person that I saw it with, however, enjoyed it, but clearly from a so-bad-it's-good perspective. But my feeling is, this filmmaker was trying to make a great underground film, and didn't. If he set out to make a low-budget spoof, maybe I would have enjoyed it more. But I don't think he did, so I didn't.

After the opening few minutes I was really getting the feeling that I'd made a mistake to watch this - the low budget was very obvious. But then it got going and I was slowly drawn in to the film until I no longer noticed the low budget. Maybe the quality got better as the film progressed, or maybe it just became so involving that it didn't matter, but by the end of the film I was thinking "this is a damn good film!".The low budget is obvious in the makeup, some of the characters are really too clichéd and there are continuity goofs, but the overall package is a very good film. Certainly comparing it to a big budget movie, it stands up very well just on the strength of the story and the acting alone.That the director made this on a $15,000 is truly staggering. Hollywood could learn some lessons from this guy in an age of multimillion dollar flops

OK now I liked this movie unlike a lot of the straight to DVD movies that I have watched, it had some great action along with some good fights as well. I really liked the whole escape from Lucifer's bounty hunters idea, this movie had a little bit of something for everyone, it had action, humor, thrills, and even sadness towards the ending. I liked the movie although I thought the ending could have been a lot better if it was given a little more thought. Altogether I give this movie a 7 out of 10 because I enjoyed it, I have seen theatrical films that could learn a thing or two from this film even though I wasn't a big fan of the ending. I would recommend this to action fans and those who like thrillers because this movie is certainly not disappointing.