Dynamixor
The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.
Murphy Howard
I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.
Roxie
The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;
vegeta3986
You know, normally when i review movies, i like to make jokes about how the camera quality is bad or the cinematography is nonexistent, however, this was an odd movie because for more than half of it, there WAS no cinematography by which i mean, it was pitch black with the camera moving around in a vain attempt to find the actors. half the time i thought they just filmed a version of their game of manhunt. So i will do the best i can to piece together what happened in this review.We open up with our very European sounding cast not having any weed so they drive up to a person's house and buy some weed from them for a whole 60 quid!...being American i have no idea how much money that is. let's just assume it's.... five bucks. i don't know. they then proceed to go camping in the woods. and they proceed to, you guessed it, do drugs and have sex out there. the sheer originality of this movie astounds me. What's that? we need a location? well we can always put them in an orgy party in the woods! Brilliant! I guess it's just the fallback locale because it's cheap and you don't need to invent your own ambient noises....except in this woods there WERE no ambient noises, but i digress. The main character, (some guy i don't even remember his name) is depressed because his adopted brother went missing a year ago and he gets sulky for a while. then they decide to investigate a house in the middle of the woods because.....i have absolutely no idea. Because it's there i guess. Once inside the main char hears some weird voices and sees a few ghostly figures of children.Now, you might find it odd that i'm pretty much ending the review here, but i gotta tell ya, i saw the movie the whole way through, and i honestly don't know what happened. It was so dark for over half the movie that i could not tell who was doing what. At some point one of the girls hurts her ankle near a crystal statue of a deer or something and starts to scream and then gets drowned or something....i couldn't tell ya. Seriously it was like someone put a garbage bag of the camera lens. Every once in a while you'd get half the screen at around 10% visibility and you'd have to try to figure out what was going on from there. We understand that darkness is scary, but not so much darkness that you can't see ANYTHING for HALF THE MOVIE. So i guess some more of them die and i think the main character runs away. There's some interspersed movies of some kids getting killed. i don't know WHY they're just there. If i could have seen half the movie maybe it would have made more sense. As it is, it was a confusing mess, and it makes me want to watch an incredibly bright movie to reacquire my eyesight. So you may ask why this movie isn't a 1. and that's because sadly, i actually liked the ending credits. It was done pretty originally and coolly from pieces of newspaper clippings and that actually was the best part of the whole movie. Sad eh? I would have liked to have seen what was going on , but sadly as the movie is, i really couldn't tell you what happened halfway on.So with terrible lighting, nonsensical scripting, and unlikable characters, "The Innocent" is FAR from innocent, with a 2, out of 10.
destroyerUSA
I watched this on a DVD box set I picked up at Best Buy, and can't stop thinking about it so am gonna post my thoughts on here. Firstly, it's not the next silence of the lambs, but... it's cool. It's your usual teenagers on spring break stuff, but the setting is unusual (a weird sculpture place and hotel) and the acting is not half bad either. The direction is what makes it stand out. You feel like you're there with these kids. Seems obvious, a bit of shaky camera work, etc, but it transcends that, it's well cut, the footage a bit dodgy, but the angles, choice of framing, etc is really first class. I'm not sure about the ending, but it was better than a cop out gore fest you usually get. The scenes in sepia were the best moments for me, they looked great and had some really excellent suspense building surprises. Overall it's a film that shows it's budget technically, but shows premise and potential from the director and his cast and crew. Not surprising to see them all moving on to bigger things now! I want to see another film directed by this guy, ideally on a bigger budget, maybe with a face or two in it. Even if you don't enjoy the film, you gotta give it credit, it's more watchable (despite the technical issues) than that stupid 'captivity' that's just come out! Someone give that budget to this fella!
wideopenvision
Actor Stuart Brennan takes the directorial chair for the second time in this dark horror film. Shot in Devon the film does what so many micro budget independent films fail to do and thats portray the characters as believable people avoiding the cheesy lines associated with many inde horror films. Slow paced yet never boring, always on edge with the tense atmosphere, not gory yet still very scary. Fantastic score from Alan Deacon, and superb animated credits, good performances all round and a cool cameo from Brennan himself. Burn Hand Film Productions again show that massive budgets are not needed for good strong entertainment. Well worth a watch.
