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Kaaterskill Falls More at IMDbPro »
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| Index | 28 reviews in total |
3 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
My God, the horror...., 23 January 2005
Author:
Thomas Kaplan (atomican-1) from Indiana
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
Ordinarily, I can tolerate just about any movie at 2 in the morning.
One night, however, my impressive endurance was tested, and I failed. I
stumbled across a little cinematic gem known as "Kaaterskill Falls,"
and I would never be the same again.
First off, the script. This is undoubtedly the worst screen writing I
have ever heard. You know all those stereotypes of indie film that we
film buffs try so hard to shout down? Well, this movie is all of them.
Every single one. Without fail. From the "detached,
nature-beauty-loving" hitchhiker character with his cliché and artsily
expressed hatred of cell phones to the "oh my god it's genius" twist
ending (which, in itself, is the epitome of bad student film writing),
the movie is painful.
When it first came on, the description read, "A hitchhiker terrorizes a
couple in the mountains." This interested me, so I decided to watch. In
the course of the movie, there was almost nothing the hitchhiker did
that could be construed as "terrorizing." At most, he was mildly
unsettling and generally dull.
In the end, I found this to be the worst movie I had ever seen,
unseating "Valentine" and "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls." To date,
this has not changed.
3 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Roman Polanski need not worry, 24 August 2004
Author:
threepete (threepete@yahoo.com) from Denver, CO
Have you ever watched a movie and thought "gee, I could do better than
this". Well, this is one of those movies.
All involved in this farce should be ashamed of themselves. The acting
is unspeakably bad, the editing would embarrass a high school film
class and the plot is so ridiculous as to be hysterically funny.
I like independent films, but why is it so many of these movies insist
on having actors respond to questions with long vacuous stares? It
would have been nice to understand why Lyle was disaffected, or explore
the relationship between Ren and Mitchell. Noooo, that would be work
and why develop characters when you can use pregnant pauses for
dramatic effect.
I know it takes all kinds, but if you are the type to enjoy this movie,
you seriously need to get out more!!
2 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
Never pick up a stranger, 11 July 2004
Author:
jotix100 from New York
This film is described as a thriller in the local newspaper ad, but in fact
it is far from that. This moody picture directed by Josh Apter and Peter
Olsen is much better than most of what the comments in this forum would lead
a future viewer to believe. Sure, it's not for everybody and, yes, it is
strange, but it will stay with you for a while.
The couple on the way to a week end cabin in upstate New York, near the
Kaaterskill Falls is in serious trouble. Their relationship is nothing and
never will amount to anything. Only after the mysterious hitchhiker enters
their lives, that becomes apparent.
In retrospect, Ren and Lyle, the Manhattan couple would never pick up Mitch.
There is something more to why they give them the ride and the way they let
him stay with them. We realize who the strong one is and how this person
manipulates the whole thing to an advantage. The last scene at the
Kaaterskill Falls is executed brilliantly.
The three principals act naturally. Hillary Howard is perfect as Ren, the
mousy wife. Mitchell Riggs as Mitch, the hitchhiker plays his part well and
lastly, Anthony Leslie is fine as Lyle.
The score of the film is excellent.
2 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
Strangely mesmerizing, 25 October 2003
Author:
Wham-3 from Harrisburg, PA
This is not a gripping movie, but it has a believability to it that I find unique. Three quite ordinary people move through a weekend hiking in the country engaging in ordinary conversations and non-movielike dialogue. There are some cinematic techniques used seemingly to keep us more interested than we would be otherwise. It's good to hang in until the end because there are two unexpected and provocative twists that will make this movie stay with you and provide great grist for indie movie conversations. 6.5 out of 10.
3 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
Nice scenery and Mrs. Hoek was kinda cute, 12 June 2005
Author:
Brandt Sponseller from New York City
Well, the scenery's nice. I live in New York City and I'm an avid
hiker. I often go to the areas where Kaaterskill Falls was filmed, in
and around the Catskill Mountains. The opening of the film has some
nice cinematography of the roads in the area, and the final sequence
has some nice cinematography of hiking areas.
That's surprising, because the cinematography in the rest of the film,
as well as the dialogue, the majority of the performances, the story
and so on all suck.
As many have noted, Kaaterskill Falls is something of a remake of Roman
Polanski's 1962 film, Nóz w wodzie (Knife in the Water). I haven't seen
the Polanski film yet, but I'd imagine that there has to be more to it
than there is here.
Kaaterskill Falls is very easy to state in a nutshell, because a
nutshell is all there is. A wife, Ren (Hilary Howard), and her husband,
Stimpy--er, uh, Mitchell (Mitchell Riggs), are traveling to a cabin in
the Catskills to make a baby. They see a hitchhiker, Lyle (Anthony
Leslie), and Ren impulsively decides to pick him up. The guy says he
can't find a place to stay. Stimpy impulsively decides to let him stay
with them. Flirtations and jealousies ensue. They go out hiking
together the next day. And you can fill in the last sentence.
One problem with Kaaterskill Falls is that it's one of far too many
films made in the wake of The Blair Witch Project (1999) with the
belief that merely having a camera and a couple warm bodies will
produce a good film. I'm not much of a fan of The Blair Witch Project,
and I wasn't much of a fan of the film that precipitated it, The Last
Broadcast (1998). The Blair Witch Project has also spawned a festering
mound of copycat crap, such as The Black Witch Project (2001), Back
Woods (2001), and on and on. But it's not that I hate all films in that
vein. Both Open Water (2003) and Incident at Loch Ness (2004) are
masterpieces in my view, for instance.
But a good film requires technical competence and decent performances.
Not every actor is skilled at improvisation. Even those skilled at it
can't always be "on"--just look at the hit and miss nature of
Christopher Guest's films. Directors Josh Apter and Peter Olsen have
their cast improv most of Kaaterskill Falls, and the result is that 80%
of the film is a trio of talking heads spouting banal nonsense. Worse,
you can often transparently see the cast attempting to stretch or twist
conversations around to just keep them going, to just say something.
How about writing some plot next time, guys? There's a reason I don't
routinely knock on the doors of Joe Schmoes begging to see their home
videos from birthday parties.
Since a feature film currently needs to be about 90 minutes long, the
"talking heads spouting banal nonsense in the cabin" segment goes on
for about an hour. And when I say "talking heads", I'm being literal.
I've only rarely seen directors more fond of close-ups. Apter and Olsen
will routinely zoom in (often blurrily) to chins far enough that an
actor's eyes are cut off. To make up for that, they'll next fill the
screen with the actor's eyeball. Or nostril. Or cheekbone. During one
five-minute segment of non-stop chatter between the three leads, they
mostly leave the camera on Ren so that her whole face fills the screen.
I guess Apter and Olsen went on a beer run. Even though there was often
no plot, some medium and wide shots would have been nice to break up
the monotony.
And it gets worse. They routinely use sound continuity that goes way
against the grain of visual continuity in that they have an actor
talking for a few moments while we're looking at that actor without his
or her lips moving. It's like they're trying to create a stoner
freak-out moment--one of those woozy, the-world-is-taffy brain-jams
where everything starts going out of sync. What that has to do with the
story or tone of the film, I don't know. Kaaterskill Falls isn't
exactly Head (1968), or even the drug scene from Killing Zoe (1994). In
the same vein, they repeatedly use "skip editing". That's where a cut
goes from the actor talking to the same actor talking a few moments
later, saying something a bit different, in a different position in the
frame, etc.--the effect is like an LP record skipping. That's an
interesting effect but an hour of it is too much.
Apter and Olsen also have a number of technical problems, such as sound
and lighting. The opening scene has horrid sound, and they even note as
much on the commentary track. Fellows, if you didn't fix the sound with
your ADR, try it again, and remix it. Hire a competent sound engineer
(I work at a reasonable rate, by the way) and do it again. Don't just
release it even though it's crappy. The lighting during the night scene
was also horrible. I know it's supposed to be dark, but the audience
needs to see _something_.
The last half hour is "talking characters spouting banal nonsense on a
hiking trail". This section is a bit better, but I think part of it was
my attraction to the scenery. That shows just what a bad decision it
was to leave the talking heads in a cabin with particleboard walls for
an hour. There's also a smidgen of plot in the last section. Still,
that was only good enough to bring my score back up to a 3.
The Blair Witch Project wasn't that great. It was a success because of
the ingenious marketing campaign. Let's stop trying to copy its
"formula" and get back to creating worthwhile artworks.
1 out of 1 people found the following review useful:
Boring trash that screams, "I'm an independent film! Love me!", 28 February 2004
Author:
Aussie Stud from Providence, Rhode Island
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
What a sorry excuse for a movie this was. Fortunately for me I skipped
renting this, thereby foregoing the rental fee, but watched it on cable
instead.
It didn't make the experience any less excruciating though.
What we basically have is some sort of yuppie couple, ridiculously played by
two untalented hacks who wouldn't know the word "act" even if they stumbled
upon it, who make a retreat to the quiet digs of the mountains for a weekend
of getaway fashion. Instead, they decide to pick up a mysterious hitch-hiker
who barely says more than two words (and trust me, that's a blessing in
disguise) and with him comes trouble.
There were various points throughout the film where I dozed off and managed
to pick up where I had left off simply because the film hadn't made any sort
of progress. The camera work was jerky, the soundtrack was flat and boring
(if you get your joy from listening to a guitar strumming out the same notes
repeatedly, then that's your deal) and the acting, laughable.
As for the "plot twist" where we find out who really killed the hitch
hiker... were we not supposed to see that one coming? I also see that the
budget of this film (approximately $10.00) skimped on the make-up and
special effects as afterwards when the camera pans on the poor hitch-hiker
after he "falls" to his death on a pile of rocks below a cliff, there's not
even any blood!
Whatever. If you get off on watching hack film makers try and copy classic
directors by making hackneyed chop jobs like this garbage, then this movie
is for you. It is torture trying to sit through this movie. It goes nowhere,
and takes forever doing so as well.... VERY SLOWLY.
However, some might find amusement in the laughable acting range displayed
by the couple, in particular the girl with the black-rimmed glasses. As
someone else commented, "How mid-90's!"
My Rating - 0 out of 10
1 out of 1 people found the following review useful:
Nice little Ingmar Bergman homage, 3 February 2004
Author:
J. Wellington Peevis from Malltown
City couple heads to their Catskill cottage. They pick up a quiet, strange
hitchhiker whom they can't seem to shake.
I liked this, the bad ending notwithstanding. Id love to be able to say why
the ending is stupid, but you should just watch it. When it ran on Sundance
it was billed, 'hitchhiker terrorizes couple'. That's very inaccurate. He
doesn't terrorize them at all, he's a little strange, but a decent person.
What he does do, intentionally I'm sure, is expose their relationship for
the charade it really is. What's interesting is that any relationship, given
the right set of circumstances, can just as easily have the scaffolding
ripped away, whether by an interloper as is done here, or through trauma.
That is why so many fail when tragedy is injected. You jump into a
relationship and quickly get carried down stream so to speak, and in doing
so permanently blind yourself to many of the flaws inherent. We have to, or
absolutely nobody would ever get married. The hitchhikers unexpected
presence in their lives awakens sunken desires in the wife, not just the
usual sexual rubbish, and immediately the marriage is steered towards the
shoals. I found the whole experience very refreshing, save the ending. Dumb,
someone should have talked them out of it. Now if you want to make a case
that this guy doesnt actually exist, so that the ending has to be as it
was... I don't know... One last thing: Why cant Sundance and IFC stick to
showing films like these? Sure would be nice. You know what I'm talking
about.
i didn't like this movie, 31 January 2005
Author:
isee from United States
wow. this movie was about hour and a half and something ACTUALLY happened at the last 10 minutes for a few minutes. it wasn't anything too thrilling. i wouldn't recommend seeing it.nothing seemed important. i liked how there were shots that lasted for a few minutes, but it didn't seem like anything too important was happening. and i thought the camera shots were pretty cool too. kind of annoying after a while but it was different and i thought it was nice. but yeah, most of the "exciting" parts of the movie was at the last few minutes and the plot kinda twisted. i didn't know some things were gonna happen...well i was half asleep after the first hour trying to pay attention, although not much you needed to pay attention to while watching this video. the tension was building up in me for ever thinking something might happen. and i was expecting this in the first hour, but... that didn't happen, again, waited forever for something to occur. well, thats pretty much it. and the movie is not a thriller, don't think it's anything too exciting because it's not. just a head's up before you may see this movie. i just sat there wondering why i had waited and missed a few of my television shows. if you want to see it, then see it when nothing else is on because it may waste a few hours of your time.
Promising film, could have been better., 27 August 2004
Author:
arochom from United States
This film could have been done much better. There did not seem to be a
realistic
antagonistic relationship between the two men which is supposed to propel
the plot.
There is an excellent scene in the darkened woods involving the guys, and a
scene at
the falls that is well done. On the down side, there is no chemistry
between the
husband and wife. Why the guys are at lock-horns is a puzzle. The
cinematography is
good, and so is the music (although the music is ill-suited at
times).
The film's plot does take interesting turns and is fairly intelligent, but
the ending is
troubling. Rent or buy Knife in the Water (the inspiration for this film)
to gain an
understanding of what Kaaterskill Falls was trying to do.
Don't Bother, 15 February 2004
Author:
JamieRaven from Alabama
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
*WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD*
This film could have had so much more potential with more experienced
actors, and directing. The story was good, but left me disappointed. One
thing an actor must know is to not act like one. You must make the audience
forget they are watching a movie, and that what's happening in front of them
is real. That is the craft of a truly great actor. There could have been
more resentment between Lyle and Mitchell. Maybe have them duke it out over
Ren, since that's what both obviously wanted to do. It was good writing to
switch Ren with Mitchell at the end as the one who kills Lyle, but the lack
of putting real emotion and confrontation ultimately ruined this film for
me.
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