The horror/dramedy The
Revenant received multiple awards at film festivals in 2009, yet its
release has been delayed until just recently. That could either mean that it’s
horribly bad or the studio that purchased it didn’t know what time to release
it. Halloween? Summer? Post New Year’s Death Slot? It ended up going straight
to video, so it can’t be that good, right?
Regardless of the fact that this flick has been a critical
darling on all the movie websites I frequent daily, I wholeheartedly say that I
cannot agree with any of them. This was boring, drawn out and pointless.
The story of an American soldier in Iraq who is
gunned down, and when his body is shipped back to the US he awakens
as a zombie/vampire hybrid known as a Revenant. In order to not decompose he
needs to drink fresh human blood, so he enlists the assistance of his stoner
roommate to help him get what he needs to survive. Together they decide to
become a vigilante team that takes out local gang bangers and criminals.
It’s a decent set-up, but it takes F-O-R-E-V-E-R to get
there. Taking your time to set-up characters and plot are great in my book, but
when said characters talk about nothing and scenes are needlessly stretched out
to breaking point for no apparent reason I have to call bullshit. Absolutely
nothing of note goes on for the first hour of the flick’s unnecessarily long
two-hour runtime.
Lead actor David Anders (of TV’s Once Upon A Time, Heroes
and Alias) isn’t a bad actor. The
problem is that he’s trying way too hard for this material. His character isn’t
interesting or sympathetic in any way. The script tries to manipulate the
audience into feeling that way about him, but it fails miserably. His co-star
Chris Wylde, who plays Anders’ stoner pal, is way over the top when compared to
his low-key performance. I can see that the director’s intention was to have a
Laurel & Hardy type of duo here, but nothing they do or say is even
remotely funny no matter how hard the screenplay tries to make the situations
the characters find themselves in humorous.
Once the leads decide to become vigilantes I thought the
film would take off and begin cashing in on it’s initial premise, but they are
written as completely inept morons that can’t even take down a dude robbing a
liquor store. Anders’ character cannot be killed by conventional means, so why
is he afraid of being shot every time some asshat pulls a gun on him?! Why does
he keep purchasing and drinking alcohol when he knows it will make him barf up
his own blood, thus making him crave even more human blood to make up for it?!
I don’t even remember there being a scene where Anders’ character realizes that
he needs to drink blood to live. He just wanders into a blood bank at one point
and attempts to rob it. Horrible, horrible writing!
And even as the film rushes toward its overly hokey climax
and the two fools are finally able to dispense some justice the film takes a
left turn and decides to throw some ridiculous statement about the government
our way. By this point I was just waiting for it to end, but it just keeps on
chugging along. This two-hour movie felt like four.
Writer/director D. Kerry Prior really needs to get someone
to edit his screenplays for him. He writes his scenes in such a way that they
get dragged out for way too long when the point he’s trying to hammer into our
skulls could have been made in half the time. He also needs to start
instructing his cinematographer to move his camera around once in a while. The
“fly on the wall” style he uses here is one of the reasons the film is so
freakin’ slow. During the liquor store robbery scene there’s one shot used for
the whole shebang. It’s supposed to be scary and exciting, not overwhelmingly
tedious.
When the movie ended I couldn’t believe that a lot of the
critics, whose opinions I respect, were sucking off this flick so hard. I can
see what the filmmakers were trying to do, but as far as I’m concerned they
failed at every turn. What could have been a fun piece of genre mashing ended
up being a test of my patience and half assed political commentary reminiscent
of The Phantom Menace.
So I recommend that the next time you go to the Redbox
looking for some direct-to-video gem that might have slipped through the cracks
of the Hollywood machine… choose something that isn’t The Revenant. You’d be
better off renting Mega Python vs. Gatoroid
instead.
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