Thursday, July 7, 2016

The Rift

Procep; science-fiction horror, Serbia / South Korea / Slovenia, 2016; D: Dejan Zečević, S: Katarina Čas, Ken Foree, Monte Markham, Dragan Micanović

Liz, a Slovenian emigre to the US, suffers ever since her son died from a terminal illness. She is given an assignment by the CIA to join their agent, John Smith, and travel to Serbia, where a secret satellite crashed. They are joined by ex-astronaut Dysart and agent Darko. Once in that rural area, the four discover that there is no satellite - instead, there is only a space suit of an astronaut who disappeared in a pink portal on the Moon 35 years ago, which was witnessed by Dysart. Darko and some old woman get killed, but rize from the dead as some sort of Zombies, and thus John has to decapitate them with an axe. He goes crazy and wants to kill Liz and some lad as well. He kills them, but the pink portal returns Liz to the hospital with her child alive again. TV reports talk about end of times and mass hysteria after the astronaut is seen walking on the streets.

The first science-fiction horror film from Serbia is a title that should have been reserved for a better movie than the viewers got with "The Rift". The film has two virtues: one is an excellent intro, with opening credits displayed around a rotating Moon in space, each time he is eclipsed when behind the Sun; the other is a neat idea that an American story actually goes to Serbia for a change, since the CIA protagonists have to obtain an alleged satellite that crashed somewhere around the periphery far from Belgrade. Unfortunately, everything else is awful. The story is simply unintelligible - the four characters stumble upon incoherent events which seem to unravel as if every new 20 minutes were written by another screenwriter, which range from Zombies up to some pink portal on the Moon, none of which make any sense or seem to align into any conclusion or a point. Even worse, the writing of the dialogues is exhaustingly empty, monotone and standard, with characters talking miles of boring lines. It is often a bad sign in a horror movie when a killer with an axe is chasing someone without running - and instead just walks slowly, so slowly as if a bowl of spinach is waiting for him at the other end. Another is when it resorts to too many of those moments when there is no sound, and then a sudden "boo" moment jumps at the viewers, even if it makes no sense. Unfortunately, there is little sophistication or innovation in "The Rift", an it's simply just not fun, either.

Grade;+

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