Andy Carrasco (pranakhan)
If you're someone with no appreciation for really bad film making, then this film will frustrate, anger, and cause you psychological trauma. Please don't post YET ANOTHER clichè "I want 90 minutes of my life back" review, you're not dazzling anyone with your wit. For those with an appreciation for hidden qualities of exceptionally terrible cinema, read on! I was intrigued by the "shadow people" premise, but didn't make it through the first 10 minutes. Yeah, I wasn't in the mood.However, I was rather bored today and discovered this little treasure propping up my table leg. I forgot all about it! I thought it would be about horribly mutated grizzly bears attacking nubile teens in the forest. I decided to let it spin in the background. About 15 minutes in, I was mesmerized and overcome with awe… I... just... couldn't... stop...watching!!! My friends, this film is an example purest cinematic cheese so incredibly bad it borders on the edge of a bizarre artistic masterpiece. Nay, cinematic genius! The script is just awful. Every line of dialog is monumentally stupid and unbelievable! It must be nigh on impossible to not write at least one accidental line of quality dialog in an entire script! I mean… really?!?! Does the writer truly think that people talk like this? One of the most confounding bits of dialog I have ever experienced occurs 6 minutes in: = Sylvian and sit at dinner table peeling fruit (a kiwi?!?) = WIFE: Maybe it's for the best. SYLVIAN: The best… The best? How could it be for the best? WIFE (pause): Well, I just think that... SYLVIAN (interupting): *I* know what the best is... = Sylvian picks up fruit from table = SYLVIAN: This... This is the best. This is what we like. But...= Sylvian puts fruit on table then STABS it with tool = SYLVIAN: *This* is what we need. At the end of the day, *this* is what we need. *This* is the best. Now isn't it? WIFE: Okay… so that's the best. But do you really think that's going to happen? This delicate ballet of intricate interaction completed, I found myself in the most serene state of bewilderment I've experienced. Like: WWWHHHAAAAATTTT?! Oh it just gets better! The characters are an eclectic mix of nearly incompatible human archetypes. The sheriff (played with disaffected aplomb by Judd Nelson) is an wanna-be porn producer? Sylvian, the main character, is a cold husband, genius-ish, and a COMPLETE a$$hole! He's so fractiously rude you will experience sudden urges to slap the scurrilous jackassness out of him. The wife is robotic-ally subservient, schizophrenic, and suffers from mild cognitive defects. Oh my God, let me tell you about the "pastor" (who pronounces it "pastuer")! He's one of the most fascinating characters in film! You OWE it to yourself to see him, I promise you'll be rewarded with mirthful glee! This guy is the epitome of "strangeness!" His right hand is weird, like a congenital defect exacerbated by severe arthritis. When frightened, he regresses into a primitive chimpanzee state! His dialog is heteroclite! I was rapt! This combination creates a grotesquely comical character that is both entertaining and impossible to comprehend. Pure... freaking... genius! This film is a glowing exemplar of over-acting! Every character moves and emotes in an twitchy and hysterical manner. I first blamed the actors. Yet Judd Nelson, who has proved himself a talented believable performer, is also swept away in the twitch energy of the film. Obviously, this is the fault of the director. He's responsible for refining the actors' nuances of scene, emotion, and dialog. In this case, he was either totally stoned or deliberately forced the cast to imbibe vast amounts of crystal meth. If the latter, this director is a risqué artistic and comedic genius. The story becomes incidental. I was more fascinated with the films technicalities than the story. Sylvian is building a "perpetual motion" machine in his dusty unsealed cabin-like workshop that only supplies electricity to the lights. The computers, no matter how much he pounds on them, are clearly off. He's in a neighborly dispute with an all male family of trailer-bound redneck meth cookers that moonlight as ingenious fashion designers (I expect the Top Hat to make a comeback soon) Somehow, the machine is creating/ferrying humanoid creatures visible only in the dark. Then a bunch of stuff happens and you'll come to about 15 minutes after the credits dazed and unsure how you got there. These ingredients form an infectiously surreal tapestry of thought, emotion, and narrative that would make Vincent van Gogh mournfully remove his remaining ear. Interestingly, to add more to the surrealist factor, my copy of the DVD didn't have a "Top Menu"! Just the film, in a single file, no menu or extras or previews at all. I hit them menu button, and was shown a blank gray 4:3 screen. Weeeiiiirrrrddd! Yes, brothers and sisters, this film is *THAT* good! Amazingly bad! It's a brilliant, confounding, mesmerizing example of exceptionally bad film and the strange way these films, when made bad good enough, become something altogether different and somehow... great? I'm thinking this this type of film should get an official genre of its own? Perhaps we'll classify them as "Crapomedy", or even better: "Narmedy"!!! Yes, that's it! (It's both bad and wrong. It's "badong" or "gnodab" :-) ) Narmedy! If you don't get it, look up the term "Narm" in reference to film and TV.
TheLittleSongbird
Actually I wasn't expecting very much watching Shadow People, but seeing a movie as inept in every department as Shadow People is enough to make anybody reel. Amateurish is insulting to the word amateurish when talking about the movie from a visual and technical point of view, the editing is very choppy, the lighting dull, the sets looking even worse than a hoarder's home and effects that don't even look finished. The direction is incompetent, the pacing drags on so most of the movie is unbearably tedious and the dialogue is clunky at best. The story is ridiculous and paper thin, and just when I was questioning the point of the Guorde Shadow People doesn't even try to give an explanation. The characters have no development and I ended up hating every single one of them. The pastor was hilarious in how unintentionally odd he was but that's it. And it certainly doesn't help that they are wildly overacted by the whole cast.Overall, a shockingly awful film that was bad even for my already low expectations. 1/10 Bethany Cox
DerDuchess
RARELY do I find a movie I can't, at the least, tolerate. Sadly, this was one of a few. I survived maybe the first 10 minutes of it before packing it in. I should have known there were going to be problems from the get go. It opens with Judd Nelson producing "homegrown" porn. Then you find out a few minutes later he's the sheriff. Wow...it only gets better. (tongue in cheek) We open up on the protagonist venturing out to his lab. It is a shed resembling the unchinked walls of a log cabin. We can only imagine what kind of "nature" is coming & going through those gaps...light, wind, critters etc. Then there's the dirt floors. Really? When he starts dinking on a computer I really start wondering "Is this going to get any better?!" Honestly, who is going to run lab computers & other electronics in that sort of environment? I think I got as far as someone from the real world delivering him some more electronic equipment & then I "pulled the plug".This should have had a special viewer warning. "Caution: This film is explicitly awful." If you enjoy bad writing, bad set design & overacting, this is your flick!!!
