Dead Sea |
  • USA • 2014 • 90m •    • Directed by: Brandon Slagle. • Starring: Britt Griffith, Alexis Iacono, Jw Wiseman, Devanny Pinn, Brandon Slagle, James Duval, Chanel Ryan, Candace Kita, Jennifer Woods, Dillon Paigen, Tawny Amber Young, Frederic Doss, K.J. McCormick. • Music by: E. Rex, John Roome.      A Marine Biologist is assigned to investigate the mysterious deaths of marine life in an inland salt water lake that have been attributed to a creature thought to have been the stuff of legend.
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Review:
The first 20-30 minutes are a dreary mostly non-eventful hodge-podge of unrelated scenes, in which new characters keep plopping up at an irritating pace like on a conveyor belt. First the film poops on us with a Marxist perspective of U.S. troops in Iraq, a sort of Chomskyesque vision of world events - American soldiers portrayed as out-of-control psycho-killers, with terrorist suspects portrayed as innocents (and played by non-Arabs, to make things additionally unrealistic).
Later, a very cliche and stupid "ecological message" confirms my suspicions that this particular Ed Wood descendant is either another delusional left-winger or some apolitical buffoon trying to weasel himself into Hollywood by pleasing Tinseltown's "Masters" with the "proper political orientation". Must even Z-movie makers kiss the hinders of the elites, the Marxist Establishment? This film-maker must have thought "hey, what if I made the film PC? maybe they'll take notice of me!" No, because for every talent-free leftist film-maker there are 10 semi-talented ones (and very rarely the occasional real talent) so why should they give a hoot about the numerous laughable hacks.
But that's the least of this film's problems. Idiotic dialog and child-like characterization top the list of this film's screw-ups, followed by very bad acting, a disjointed story, lackluster writing, unexciting events, and a sort of overall blandness and awfulness that permeates literally every scene.
The premise is ludicrous: a lake monster needs a sacrifice... every time someone wants to leave the town? Every 30 years? Dunno, it's a bit confusing - or perhaps it was just too dull to follow. So basically the town's residents manage to keep such a huge scientific discovery quiet for over 50 years: did I get that right? The locals sacrifice people to the monster, a cretinous premise that would make sense in a 15th-century setting but seems fairly laughable in a modern environment.
What kind of a monster gets hungry after 30 years? What kind of a bloody metabolism is that? Even snakes have lunch more often than that! And then he leaves the brunette stranded on the shore - doesn't eat her. Was his stomach full? Not likely, because he eats another woman later. Asinine script. The two soldiers would be much more suitable for a comedy than this kind of morose, boring, idiotic horror film. One is a mouth-breathing moron, always looking lost and confused, while the other one looks like a bearded, more pudgy version of Ricky Gervais. So yes, they're hardly ominous-looking - unless you'd consider Bill & Ted or Beavis & Butthead ominous.
The first encounter between the survivor girl and the scientist is hilarious: a master-class example of how NOT to act, direct and write, scenes so dumb they defy description. Almost as dumb is the soldier getting whacked over the face with a board, yet being completely unaffected by it, as if his face were made out of rubber so that objects just kind of bounce of it, causing no damage. He then manages to miss the girl - yet again - despite shooting at her with a semi-automatic rifle from a distance of only several feet. (Even Lucas's stormtroopers are laughing at this.) Both soldiers keep missing the women, despite firing at them from fairly generous distances.
"You know, I really loved ing you, going in and out, in and out." What a line, huh?
Review by fedor8 from the Internet Movie Database.
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