I wanted this to be great. I like John Goodman in most anything he does and Vera is the same. So where does it go off the rails, apparently right off the dolly rails, right from the beginning. Blair witch wasn't so scary people left the theatres puking, they were suffering from motion sickness. Today's kitschy action camera move is to forget about any rigging and just run with it. In fact it sometimes looked like the editing suite added some jittery rhythmic plug ins of their own. That this cheap trick is already trite and tired is enough that it's starting to fade from popularity. The hold outs use it for only the most dire sequences and typically only in lazy B and even C action movies. It was used with moderation in No Country for Old Men, Sicario liked it, heck even Spielberg has tried it out, but none of them from opening to closing credits. This movie had potential. The creatures are new to me but looked born of anime origins, unfortunately we see their armour skinned versions in first few minutes and have their urchin shells peeled back to reveal the dying bogeyman soon after. Tada!, now what to do for the next one hundred minutes. The plot echoes some of the real world news cycles, the nation divided ripe with alterior motives or greed, if you dug a bit it felt like the story they were trying to tell. That good wins out over evil eventually. Unfortunately the character development is weak and disjointed. There are frial bones of some decent storytelling in the body of the script but it never presents itself well enough for you to attach to the characters. The 'weapons' or powers used to off the humans is interesting but it's been done before too. Check out War of the Worlds, circa Cruise. I expected some Cloverfield camera movements having seen the trailers and planned ahead taking a gravol, I should have taken the nighttime version and simply slept thru this one, would have been better use of my two hours. I like to find at least some positives in a film, films are the culmination of many people's efforts, this is one film that I can't find one except maybe some trademark canned expressions we all enjoy from John and Vera, Ferris Buellers Alan Ruck is a surprise, Ashton Sanders, Transformers Dad Kevin Dunn and a less comical than usual character played by Kevin J O'Connor. Save your money, it's not even a popcorn romp, wait for this one on Netflix.
Review of Captive State
