Jan 13, 2016

Silent Retreat – 2016 – A new cool flick!


When I was asked if I wanted to review this movie I was actually very indecisive about it. I haven’t written a review in a long time and I thought I might have a hard time with it. But then I watched the trailer and knew I had to write about it. I also realized that the movies director was Ace Jordan which directed a short I wrote about some years ago. I knew that this would be more than the average amateurish flick that so often seek reviewers. I don’t say there’s anything wrong with that. I really like low budget movies and I often find them very refreshing. But it’s not a contradiction that a low budget movie must be amateurish by default and this movie proves it!

It might come short to the best of the bunch when it comes to acting and directing but the story is solid written and I just lover the persona gallery. There’s some characters that are so out there and I just love them. Ace also manages to deliver characters that really annoys me. That’s is at least as important as characters you love and can relate to. It creates some tension in the group of people the movie is about. There are some elements of a true slasher here. The persona gallery certainly hints about it. We have the bitch, the comedian, the natural leader and the girl next door. But it’s more than a plain slasher. It’s also a movie about team building and mental illness. It is also a ghost story of sorts.



Actually it’s hard to pinpoint what the core genre of this movie is. There is an old asylum somewhere in the background of the story. And that is of course accompanied by a raving lunatic. We get to see flashbacks of, should we say, questionable treatment once used in mental institutions. Methods that could never be used today. Or perhaps there are still places where the physicians lobotomize their patient. I hope not but I wouldn’t really be surprised. I hope the brain split isn’t carried out through the tear channel though. There is such a scene early on. Pay attention, this is actually how they used to preform it. There was also a quite high death rate among the patents.

We get to follow a boy in the past tense story and we get to follow a group of teambuilding youngsters in the present day story. Somehow these are combined and there’s also a raving lunatic running around. It’s not the slasher the persona gallery implies. I already admitted to that. But there are violent deaths involved in the story and you can see some of it in the trailer that I attached to this post. I like the movie a lot but still it seems like it’s lacking some nerve. And at the end of the day this needs to be taken into consideration when rating the flick. Verdict below.

6/10

https://www.youtube.com/user/Stark0tube (trailers, interviews and behind the scenes videos)
  


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