soulminded Review of Day of Reckoning

Day of Reckoning (I) (2016)

I feel like this movie was a sin...Where's my day of reckoning?

[1/10 · 7 February 2017]

The summary of this "thriller" movie was honestly the most exciting part of this horror show (pun intended). It had a great start, the characters were introduced in an obvious manner to let you know who were going to be key characters to the "plot", but as the movie progressed, the writers seemed to aggressively remove your choice of who to like and who to be suspicious of. The plot itself was very elegant in the fact that there seemed to be a really thought out story under the hideous coat of bad animations (there's obvious lag in the CGI and it was very annoying when there was a group of monsters and it looked as though the 1989 computer that processed this was begging to be freed from such medieval torture), stage fright acting, and overall underwhelming tone. It also felt as though there was no character development apart from the obvious divorced- parents-getting-back-together trope that was smashed in your face at the very beginning. This removed any chance to develop a relationship with any of the characters. What was extremely laughable was that the "divorced" wife instantly started dating her co-worker after a small remark, and he became apart of the family within what seemed like a day or so. What horrified me the most was the very annoying color palette switches between frames; not scenes or even chapters, but literal frames changed hues and saturation and it was very noticeable. The modern era touch with RGB spectrum colors would have been very nice if the colors had stayed consistent. Another thing, this movie takes place 15 years after the first event and no one has the slightest idea of what happened besides people died. 15 YEARS and yet the only information that was compiled was, "They come from underground and a table spoon of salt will stop them". The plot falls apart right there. Neil Armstrong could make 675 back to back trips to the moon in the time between the first event and the second. How did no one learn any valuable information about these creatures in that same time span yet they made sure there were sirens and one shelter (which just so happens to get destroyed) The premise of the plot is highly unbelievable, even for a movie. As well, nothing is really ever explained in the plot or through dialogue. It felt as though the "suspense" that was created was very intentional and it showed. For instance, Ted's wife gets bit and she makes a comment that is later forgotten until the "climactic" scene where she barely tries to take the pistol (that she was holding at first but somehow ended up in Ted's possession) and attempt to kill herself but just gets eaten. I've been ranting but let's end on a good note. Remember when the blond teenage girl cut the head off of one small snake and all of the sudden the knives became her signature weapon? What happened to those knives when the big snake grabbed her ankle with a smaller tentacle and all she did was watch for a full 5 seconds before she was pulled to the ground at -5 mph? I had never laughed so hard! She killed one snake and became a professional knife-stress!