Ed's Review Dot Com

Factory25,

Kentucker Audley, Hannah Gross, Jason Shelton, Oona Roche

Noel (Kentucker Audley) is a very depressed man from upstate New York who comes to New York City for the holidays to sell Christmas Trees for the 4th year. But this year he’s without his girlfriend which is why he’s so depressed. Time goes slowly until one night he finds a strange girl passed out on a park bench without a shoe and brings her back to the trailer to keep her warm. When she keeps showing up things get more and more mysterious.

This is a very documentary like film, dark and somber. The style is to simply show what happened, and it feels like a they just turned on the cameras and let it run. Noel is mourning his lost girlfriend and really in a funk until some excitement finally shows up, but in the meantime it’s very slow and plodding. You won’t find much excitement here, mostly scenes of people buying trees, sawing off the trunks, and you will constantly hear, “Tonight just put some hot water on it to break up the sap, and then after that lukewarm water every day” about 30 times. I kind of enjoyed the movie, but I did get really bored in parts. I kept expecting for it to pick up and get interesting at some point, but nothing much happens. When it’s over, all we learned about was some guy selling trees for one Christmas. I don’t suppose there’s a really great reason for watching this one, and I don’t think I’d want to sit through it again. This is a strange waste of film.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

Worldview Entertainment, Arcade Pictures,

AJ Bowen, Joe Swanberg, Amy Seimetz, Gene Jones, Kentucker Audley, Kate Lyn Sheil, Talia Dobbins, Donna Biscoe, Shaun Clay

Three journalists secure a helicopter to visit a remote camp in Africa run by Father (Gene Jones) the leader and chief brain washer of the group. One of the journalists has an ulterior motive as his sister is a member of the cult and wants him to see what a wonderful life they have, but in truth he wants to get her out of the place and bring her home.

This video has the feel of a documentary, but it’s a totally fictional story of what “could” happen and is obviously based on the Jonestown massacre lead by Jim Jones who encouraged his followers to commit mass suicide in 1978. There are many obvious nods to the Jonestown story. Using the found footage excuse for poor quality photography, The story is overly long, and pretty slow through most of it. They have a decent story here, but the problems I had with it are basically the long drawn out story and mostly the shaky camera. Not as bad in that department as some (because they used the idea of making a documentary as an excuse for using a tripod some of the time), it still annoys. This is a fairly decent thriller, and the subject was really good and deserved so much more than the dragging cliche treatment it got. I wanted to yell at the screen…”Get on with it already” a dozen or so times. Naturally it’s going to paint the “Eden Parish” community as a loving, peaceful, and happy place, real heaven on earth stuff, until some creepy messages get sent out for help and rescue causing you to wonder. Gene Jones does a really good job as Father of the community and he is the very best part of the film, no doubt about it. But the rest of the cast let us down. Because it’s supposed to be a true story documentary doesn’t mean you can get lazy with the lines and the story. This is basically a great idea that just wasn’t executed that well, and it’s a shame it wasn’t carried off much better than it was. I’d say pass on this one unless you’re really bored with nothing to watch.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog