Friday 4 May 2018

Review : Hungerford (2014)

Image result for hungerford movieStars: Drew Casson, Georgia Bradley

Budget: £20,000

Directed By: Drew Casson

Well well I like to be good to low budget b-moviesb but this movie has some flaws I absolutely hated i'm sorry to others it might seem petty but these heavily detracted from my viewing pleasure.
Right first off I've NEVER been a big fan of 'found footage' films. The janky way of filming just grinds on me but if the film is good enough to make me forget or see past that it's always a bonus.
This film tries out things filming wise to cheaply achieve some of their effects and I appreciate that, they're trying something new but when it detracts not only from the viewing pleasure but also understanding of whats going on in film that's never a good thing.

The fuzzing and distortion whenever one of these creatures is near is very annoying, (also is never really explained why it does this either) with the already (to me) shitty nature of found footage filming makes this film at times a little hard to follow.
Which is annoying because I like to think of myself as at least moderately intelligent. So when a film loses ME on the plot midway through I think it's damn near going to confuse the hell or lose the interest of a lot of people.

So that's the filming gripes out of the way, now onto the acting, it was very by the numbers and very over acted like the actor being overly enthusiastic over a crumb (not literally a crumb just an over exaggeration of a point) though as the film goes on this does dumb down slightly.
Now for the plus points, made for an amazingly small budget in British pounds, this £20k would not have gone far trust me. On that budget this film does have some mighty impressive effects for it's buck. Good blood and shooting effects as well as the anomalies in the sky.

So lets get on with the film. Cowen a film student of sorts decides to film his life for a week or so after waking up from a night on booze. we are later shown some kind of rocking explosion from the inside of their flat. When they go out and see whats going on they see some kind of weird storm going on throwing out random guff. An out of breath cop shows up, who they all happen to know explaining radios, phones etc are all knocked out of action.
A council man of some kind also stops the officer to see whats going on and exclaims that a nearby empty factory has been hit by lightning. Slowly but surely people start acting weird and getting violent all over town, after a botched party where one of the friends gets accused of drugging someone who has a fit they all leave for home.
When they get back they are attacked unable to stop the attacker until they spray him with deodorant (a plot that is quickly lost as well as inconsistent throughout the film) this kills the guy.

Now here's a another niggle I have with this plot, as explained in the brackets above. The deodorant thing seems to kill some people, or make the bug spring from their neck, though neither really matter all that much because by the end of the film they are just shooting people dead anyway.
So yes the cause the attacks and people getting angry are some kind of burrowing alien bug that controls you by going into your neck.
They seem far to big for this but meh film logic. Soon loads of people are infected and they try to escape multiple times only to have something go wrong. Car crashes, finding other people, getting caught the think it, it happens to this group.

Like i said i kind of lost the plot when the cop shows up and they try to escape, i picked it up quite quickly but its a bit of a cluster fuck of an ending especially when sometimes you don't know whose left alive at certain points too. They all get captured near the end but are saved by some military types, after seeing some kind of humanoid kind of alien in the dark.

I haven't totally spoiled the ending as it seems pointless and just sets up a sequel, which yes they have indeed made and yes I will endure to see if it's any improvement on this mess. THN awards Hungerford a paltry 1 out of 5 stars.


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