So, I watched "Qaudrant 9eV9" because it showed a four star rating on my Roku's Amazon App. That's unusually high for an independent horror feature on there, so it set me up for high expectations. I don't usually comment on whether or not a movie is good or give a star rating here, but four out of five is a bit too high for this movie. That said, don't let the slow start keep you from watching the film all the way through. If you start to watch it, finish it. The last twenty minutes or so are paced like an entirely different movie.
It opens back in the 70s and flashes back there quite a few times to set up the "cold war" experiment that eventually spawns our monsters. As that story line develops a pretty predictable, but fun monster movie trope develops. After the set up opening, we're introduced to our five college students, most of whom are annoying movie stereotypes and all of whom are pretty two dimensional. Thinking back to college though, I knew a lot of people on a pretty two dimensional basis, so maybe younger people can relate. I think the movie would have benefited from more frequent flashbacks, however.
This would have been an amazing short film. It could have been cut down to about 30 minutes of explanation and action and just flown by, but instead we're presented a feature that doesn't have a whole lot of extra action or character development to fill in the extra hour. It's sort of like an old Corman drive-in movie, but with less crime intrigue as a side story. There's some attempts at a romantic sidelines that half work. I didn't like any of the characters enough to care about who they were "hooking up with", but none of it was terrible. I'm guilty of my own "padding" to reach "feature length" on movies. "Indiscretions" has far more walking in the woods than we needed for a modern audience, but I was trying to establish how deep into the woods the characters had gone (even though we never strayed more than a mile or two from our cabins). In fact, watch for a similar attempt of this movie to seem "far from civilization" thwarted when we see a car pass on the not to distant main road. "Lumber vs Jack" suffered from a similar fate in that, while I could crop passing cars out of the shot, the sound was ever present. I wrote a brook into the script to explain it away.
There's also a meteor shower mentioned and viewed by our characters, that surprisingly, has nothing to do with the monsters. It is a simple device to bring together this very loose group of "friends" on a camping trip. They're not the lifelong friends with close ties you often see in these movies, but rather people who know each other because they're all in the same class and two are a couple of sorts. This leaves us with some unusual interactions for a movie like this, where characters are usually harboring long seeded guilt or feelings for one another that only come out when disaster strikes. It's a bit of a twist, but not one I'm sure most people will like.
A cooler twist on the old fashioned "kids vs monsters" sci-fi horror genre is Lexi (Dominique Storelli). She's sort of the survivor girl we recognize from 70s and 80s slasher movies thrown into a 60s drive-in monster movie. She's an axe-wielding outdoors expert thanks to her dad who taught her how to "survive in the woods with just a pocket knife".
Once the monsters finally do show up, they're pretty cool looking. Simple men in make-up and masks, but well executed. They've got super strength, but as far as a super soldier experiment goes, they weren't given much else to work with. We're never let in on how well they see in the dark, they don't seem to have much special training as far as fighting or tracking goes and it's never mentioned, but they must be half deaf. Still, they're menacing enough in a "zombie" kind of way. There are a few exceptional action sequences that would have really helped the movie had they been spread out a bit more. There's enough action for 84 minutes, but it all seems to take place at the end of the movie.
On to the production values! I don't like to take independent movies apart for low production values because most of the time those are largely a result of shrinking digital budgets. Fortunately for this movie, I don't have to. There's the slightest unevenness in the volume of dialogue to music, but overall the sound is pretty solid. You can see some very windy conditions and they handle it brilliantly. Sets are few and convincing enough. The locations are mostly outdoors and some of them allow for some impressive shots. The lighting is at times "too much". (I hate when characters in brightly lit night spaces use flashlights they clearly don't need). But, when the situation calls for that murky, hard to see shadowy darkness, we get it without being left totally in the dark. The scenes in the tents are cleverly lit. The costuming on the monsters isn't super impressive, but it's convincing and clean, which is better than elaborate and doesn't work. The fight scenes are mostly well choreographed and the gore works when it's used. Overall a pretty solid production. Most of the acting could be a bit better, but it's nothing less than you'd expect from something that was probably shot in a few weeks rather than over months. Rehearsal time makes a big difference.
If you're a fan of old monster flicks, I'd recommend this one rather than just watching "Teenagers Battle The Thing" again.
Here is the trailer so you can see some of it for yourself.
Self promotion alert!
You can add "Alien Vengeance" for more monster vs young people in the woods fun and make it a double feature.
It opens back in the 70s and flashes back there quite a few times to set up the "cold war" experiment that eventually spawns our monsters. As that story line develops a pretty predictable, but fun monster movie trope develops. After the set up opening, we're introduced to our five college students, most of whom are annoying movie stereotypes and all of whom are pretty two dimensional. Thinking back to college though, I knew a lot of people on a pretty two dimensional basis, so maybe younger people can relate. I think the movie would have benefited from more frequent flashbacks, however.
This would have been an amazing short film. It could have been cut down to about 30 minutes of explanation and action and just flown by, but instead we're presented a feature that doesn't have a whole lot of extra action or character development to fill in the extra hour. It's sort of like an old Corman drive-in movie, but with less crime intrigue as a side story. There's some attempts at a romantic sidelines that half work. I didn't like any of the characters enough to care about who they were "hooking up with", but none of it was terrible. I'm guilty of my own "padding" to reach "feature length" on movies. "Indiscretions" has far more walking in the woods than we needed for a modern audience, but I was trying to establish how deep into the woods the characters had gone (even though we never strayed more than a mile or two from our cabins). In fact, watch for a similar attempt of this movie to seem "far from civilization" thwarted when we see a car pass on the not to distant main road. "Lumber vs Jack" suffered from a similar fate in that, while I could crop passing cars out of the shot, the sound was ever present. I wrote a brook into the script to explain it away.
There's also a meteor shower mentioned and viewed by our characters, that surprisingly, has nothing to do with the monsters. It is a simple device to bring together this very loose group of "friends" on a camping trip. They're not the lifelong friends with close ties you often see in these movies, but rather people who know each other because they're all in the same class and two are a couple of sorts. This leaves us with some unusual interactions for a movie like this, where characters are usually harboring long seeded guilt or feelings for one another that only come out when disaster strikes. It's a bit of a twist, but not one I'm sure most people will like.
A cooler twist on the old fashioned "kids vs monsters" sci-fi horror genre is Lexi (Dominique Storelli). She's sort of the survivor girl we recognize from 70s and 80s slasher movies thrown into a 60s drive-in monster movie. She's an axe-wielding outdoors expert thanks to her dad who taught her how to "survive in the woods with just a pocket knife".
Once the monsters finally do show up, they're pretty cool looking. Simple men in make-up and masks, but well executed. They've got super strength, but as far as a super soldier experiment goes, they weren't given much else to work with. We're never let in on how well they see in the dark, they don't seem to have much special training as far as fighting or tracking goes and it's never mentioned, but they must be half deaf. Still, they're menacing enough in a "zombie" kind of way. There are a few exceptional action sequences that would have really helped the movie had they been spread out a bit more. There's enough action for 84 minutes, but it all seems to take place at the end of the movie.
On to the production values! I don't like to take independent movies apart for low production values because most of the time those are largely a result of shrinking digital budgets. Fortunately for this movie, I don't have to. There's the slightest unevenness in the volume of dialogue to music, but overall the sound is pretty solid. You can see some very windy conditions and they handle it brilliantly. Sets are few and convincing enough. The locations are mostly outdoors and some of them allow for some impressive shots. The lighting is at times "too much". (I hate when characters in brightly lit night spaces use flashlights they clearly don't need). But, when the situation calls for that murky, hard to see shadowy darkness, we get it without being left totally in the dark. The scenes in the tents are cleverly lit. The costuming on the monsters isn't super impressive, but it's convincing and clean, which is better than elaborate and doesn't work. The fight scenes are mostly well choreographed and the gore works when it's used. Overall a pretty solid production. Most of the acting could be a bit better, but it's nothing less than you'd expect from something that was probably shot in a few weeks rather than over months. Rehearsal time makes a big difference.
Here is the trailer so you can see some of it for yourself.
You can add "Alien Vengeance" for more monster vs young people in the woods fun and make it a double feature.
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