Wow. This movie is what happens when someone thinks they understand what the hu-mans want in a cerebral scientifical fictionalized account for motion picture films.
Risen is about a small town in Pennsylvania that gets hit by a meteorite, poisoning the air and killing everyone. The government grabs a couple of scientists to help investigate. But it seems not all those townsfolk are dead… some of them sit up and then do nothing for long, ponderous amounts of time.
Long Ponderous Amounts of Time is the new title for this movie. This movie just lets shots linger endlessly, glacially. We know slow burn films can work but there has to be something actually interesting being lingered on. This movie seems to think just pointing a camera is enough to leave us in awe… but they forgot to drop the brain bomb to blow us away before hand. So we just kind of sit there, waiting for something – anything – to happen.
It doesn’t help that the dialog is embarrassingly bad at all times. The kind of bad where you think, “nobody talks like that!” Not that there’s a lot of dialog… but nearly every line causes cringe.
Even worse, the protagonist is an inert block of wood. Which is by design… no insult to the actress who is just don’t what the script called for. She’s asked to stare morosely into space for practically the whole movie, actually doing or saying very little. She’s basically a monotone in physical form, a particularly uninteresting rock. And that’s kind of intentional as is explained in the final ten minutes of the film… but that means we have to spend an hour and thirty with a static, inactive blob.
The movie’s cinematography is remarkably good for an obviously low budget film. Individual shots – as long as they don’t include visual effects – are very good, often moody and atmospheric. But then we get the visual effects which are uniformly terrible. And I’m not just talking the minimal CGI… but also just simple green screen is done amateur hour.
This movie is a mess. An honestly ambitious mess…. but a mess. This is what happens when someone with only 50% of the necessary talent tries too hard to make a big budget thinking person’s art house sci-fi film.
Score: 62