A remake of a British thriller. Stars Amber Heard and Odette Yusman.
The story: two girls traveling in Mexico by themselves, one a party girl and one the responsible one, have a fight and split up. When the party girl doesn't show up at the rondesvou spot, the party girl tries to find her. The police won't help. A man who is looking for his missing sister helps her, but when they are able to finally find the girl it only makes all three of them targets by the kidnappers.
Was it good?
No. God, no. It was horrible. In fact it was worse than horrible -- IT WAS BORING. I mean, seriously, shouldn't the one basic rule of filmmaking be, especially when you are making a thriller, that you can't make it BORING???
The story has all the elements of a fun thriller -- two beautiful girls (and yes, Heart and Yustman are gorgeous), an exotic locale, the conflict between the nice girl and the party girl, then the drama of the one girl going missing, etc. All the beats are there...but it's just so BORING. It would be easy to blame the director (and yes, the directing is lame), but the bigger problem is the story itself. Stories need to give the audience the feeling like they are going for something, that they are pushing the edge at least a little bit. It doesn't matter if you are making a comedy, a horror movie, or a thriller -- you need to know what is it that you are pushing. Maybe it's something abou the characters, maybe it's something about the threat, maybe it's something else, but you always need that "go for it" feeling. Usually you can tell what it is because it shows that that's what the filmmaker was most fascinated by. This movie, however, has nothing. It doesn't seem to be interested in these two girls, not for their relationship, not for any internal drama, not even as eye candy. It doesn't seem fascinated with the locale. it doesn't seem fascinated by the drama of the girl going missing and the one girl being left alone with no help to find her friend. It doesn't feel fascinated by the bad guys. It doesn't seem fascinated by any moral or thematic statement.
It's just all kind of there. Which makes it all boring.
And all of that is ignoring all the ridiculous elements in the movie. Like the fact that she just seems to randomly walk around and stumble on her missing friend with no detective work at all. Just walk around in a strange country, look through some rubble, and you'll find a kidnapper within 24 hours. I can't express how stupid that was.
So a message to all filmmakers -- find something in your project that fascinates you and GO FOR IT. Maybe then you won't make soething as boring as this movie.
*** AVOID ***
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