Warning!!! Pedophile Released (2009) User Reviews

Decent first time effort at tricky topic

[saucerpeople · 5/10 · 16 December 2010]

I'm guessing some people would see this banned from it's title alone but it's worth a look passed the "P" word before those people find themselves too outraged. This film was rated at 7.7 when I first found the page today - I'm guessing as sometimes happens the cast, crew and their moms all sign in and hit the 9* rating at first then the voting settles to a more realistic level.

For a first film attempt on what seems to be minimal budget this wasn't too bad. I can't decide if employing a title like they did was part of a promotional gimmick to get the film some attention - which of of course works a treat in our current, media frenzy era over this subject - or if they truly wanted to touch on a topic many larger film outfits would run a mile from. Apparently the two lead characters penned most of the script and it does a fair job of covering some of the basic issues that would be encountered in a situation where a male had been accused of underage sex with his girlfriend and the fallout post-jail.

Read basic as meaning just that - the film's script doesn't reveal the complexities and depth of the issue to any real degree - it seems instead they left it to the acting and long, mostly silent scenes following 'Echo' around to do that job for them. How well it achieves that result I'm unsure. Some of the scenes and effects worked well but there was constant over use and over emphasis of the shaky hand-camera viewpoint - shakes and scene blur movement when you just didn't need and and really didn't want it - I felt like turning away for a break on occasions. On top of that there were some bizarre choices of music... everything from rave beats to a long scene with a minimalist discordant piano.

I gave this 5 out of 10. I'd loved to have given it higher for a couple of young, new actors daring to tackle the topic on zero budget. However for me it didn't work - there's way too much made of the aimless (supposedly aimed at atmosphere and character empathy I guess) wondering around scenes when that time could have far better been spent highlighting the complexities of what can go wrong within the framework of a possible wrong conviction for underage sexual assault. If you want an informed take on the social/media treatment of this issue - check out Chris Morris's infamous Brass Eye TV series on it. -

Don't let the title fool you, this is a great film!

[mikehaberfelner · 10/10 · 10 January 2011]

Weirdly enough, this is a movie everybody seems to have an opinion about immediately - without even having seen it. But since the title carries the word "pedophile", everybody seems to know what this is about ... and it is not. This movie is about a guy who served time for pedophilia he did not commit, and about his alleged victim, who has waited for him all these years, even if it threw her life into an abyss. And the film doesn't consider this as a statement, but tells its plot as an actual story - and in terms of storytelling, WARNING!!! PEDOPHILE RELEASED shows its ingenuity: So OK, this film has been produced on a shoestring and filmed on hand-held digital camera with only skeletal cast and crew, but it tells its compelling story in a series of greatly set-in-scene, atmospheric images and a rich cinematic language that manages to keep things moving without the use of much dialog - all of which make it hard to find anything similar in modern cinema, as this film is more reminiscent of the neorealist movement from decades ago than anything else, without ever becoming a rip-off or an unimaginative homage though. Apart from its self-assured direction, the film is also beautifully carried by Kai Lanette's (intentionally) unglamorous yet spot-on performance, which makes her, a woman in her 20's, believable even as a twelve-year-old. In a nutshell, this film is a triumph of independent, no budget cinema.

Did perverted children make this stinker?

[leetwanker · 1/10 · 20 December 2010]

The review I just read after watching this movie was fairly accurate but I think the reviewer, David, gave credit for the wrong reasons. I don't particularly care if it's someone's first film or their fiftieth. A bad movie is a bad movie. In my opinion this can hardly be called a movie. There's really no discernible storyline. The very little, largely one-sided dialog is strained and strange. Lack of a budget can't account for a bad script. This seems like it was conceived and written in about an hour on a cocktail napkin. It's obviously a sick person who writes a scene where a girl sitting completely naked on the toilet has an argument with her roommate about who's going to kick the naked girl's brother out of the house and then she walks out there buck naked and fights with him without anyone even thinking it's strange that she's standing there fully nude screaming at her brother to get the eff out of the house while there doesn't seem to be any sort of reason she couldn't have taken the time to get dressed first. Just a ridiculous way to get a nude scene into a movie it seemed to me. But hey, if you're looking for a movie with a lot of nude and rape scenes that it's impossible for a normal person to enjoy, then this movie's for you! The only reason I watched it in the first place was because it had an obviously fraudulent high rating on IMDb, and as David said, the only people who would've rated it highly are those directly involved in its creation.

To all those who think this review is poorly written, me included, the movie is much much worse. While I'd like to say I wrote it badly to prove a point, I think I just got brain damage from trying to sit through this nightmare that someone should have taken much more time to write or not have written at all.

If this saves even one person the two hours of their life that I just wasted then this has been my good deed for the day. You're welcome!

Wow...what can be said?

[vampyrecowboy · 2/10 · 3 February 2011]

There is way too much of nothing happening all the time to make this remotely interesting and captivating on any level.

Then there is the atrocious sound and soundtrack...if your ears bleed, don't blame me because you decided to watch this.

There are scene where this girl just seems to walk around aimlessly through fields and garbage dumps and alleys and hangs around deserted areas with no reason to offer the story,.

Then there are the useless family scenes with her father which also go nowhere and with her best friend which also go nowhere and lead to nothing.

It's is so boringly painful to watch in it's entirety that you might want to be heavily sedated before sitting down and hitting play on the DVD or computer.

But the absolute worst part is the shoddy camera work and production...

Camera work??? HAHAHAH ....yeah, that's a funny joke and production value....NOT!

Anyway...you were warned.

Tries to be edgy, fails miserably

[Leofwine_draca · 1/10 · 13 May 2017]

WARNING!!! PEDOPHILE RELEASED is a film with an edgy title but absolutely zero in the way of controversy or powerful material. Indeed, a paedophile does feature in the storyline, but the film simply isn't in the same league as something like THE HUNT or THE WOODSMAN. Instead it's a simple talky drama complete with all of the usual schoolboy errors associated with indie filmmaking, including stupid camera tricks and filters. The camera shakes throughout, the dialogue is dull, the lack of an external microphone means that speaking actors are drowned out by passing cars. It's just one big fail.

Some movies are bad, then there is "Warning!!! Pedophile Released"...

[paul_haakonsen · 1/10 · 9 June 2018]

Given the synopsis of the movie, then I must admit that I was expecting somewhat of a grand drama. Boy was I sorely disappointed.

This turned out to be an unbelievably boring movie. The storyline was just abysmal and director Shane Ryan seemed to have little idea of what to grasp and what to do here.

The movie was full of questionable and shoddy camera work that was all over the place in a constant blurry motion, and quite often not even in focus. And that made the movie seem like such a low budget movie, such as one I could make myself with my digital video camera.

It had a very pointless and boring story, where absolutely nothing happened.

It was just a low budget amateurish project about a girl walking aimlessly around and doing nothing.

"Warning!!! Pedophile Released" had some really poor editing, which didn't help to improve the enjoyment of the movie in any way. It also had a laughably bad soundtrack.

It had some adequate acting, but no script or contents for the performers to work with.

I was ready to give up on the movie after 11 minutes, but I decided to stick with it. Which was poor judgment on my account, I should have given up after those first abysmal 11 minutes, because the movie did not improve, which was why I stuck with it.

Yeah, waste of time...

[neshiikinz · 19 December 2010]

So I was also interested in the movie based on it's title. I thought it would be at least about a sex offender trying to maybe change his/her way, or maybe having the victim maybe seek revenge and instead maybe give the sex offender forgiveness.. you know, those typical stories.

Instead I got some awful movie with horrible soundtracks, and TERRIBLE production. This literally was shot from a home video. Even my camera has the same quality as this film when I video tape something.

HORRIBLE. Previous reviews also pointed out that there was useless scenes of the victim running around some garbage dump or a dried up river or something. she's mostly just catch on video walking or running aimlessly. They even attempted a artistic view by doing something funky with the colours, or placing duplicates of the actor and adding in some random soundtrack in the background.

Awful. Don't waste your time. I also have to fast-track.

Awful movie for a strong social topic

[laurentdelvigne-446-586973 · 1/10 · 27 October 2017]

Don't waste your time and don't be fooled by the title.

This "movie" has the worst camera work I have seen:hand-held (indie filmmakers invest in a tripod, please !).

The sound is taken from the production tapes.

And the color grading is weird and crap.

It is like a student film than a movie.

Good, but not as great as Ryan's other work

[a_marie_p · 8/10 · 11 July 2020]

Isn't as memorable as Ryan's first effort (Amateur Porn Star Killer) or later (My Name is 'A' by anonymous) and seems a bit more ambitious, which also seems to be where it has some failings, but it's still quite interesting and effective and, of course, daring and confrontational towards a controversial subject matter. Ultimately refreshing when compared to Hollywood films, though not as solid as his other films.

Garbage and a Total Time Waster

[cubangal · 1/10 · 16 December 2010]

My review contains spoilers so continue reading while knowing this up front.

I will not say I had high hopes for this movie but the title did peak my interest. The movie starts off with a dialog between the suspected victim and an interrogator. From there all goes downhill when you realize you have literally watched over ten minutes of this victim girl walking around in what appears to be an alley.

In an attempt to get past the boring parts I fast forward the movie, no such luck! It is not until about 25 minutes into the movie do you hear dialog. Up until that part there is video of random walks by this victim girl. I skipped all the up to 1 hour and 25 minutes and it is the same boring stuff. At this point I remembered how valuable the time in my life is and turned it off.

If you value your time, skip this movie. The professional ratings seem to concur.

Rather watch grass grow

[mjlehman023 · 1/10 · 19 December 2010]

Couldn't even finish this movie. I am getting really annoyed with this new trend that film makers have these days filming with what looks to be a 1985 home video camera. My dad could shoot better drunk at Christmas.

I really would not waste your time with movie. In addition to the terrible acting and unlikable character, the sound track was even worse.

Don't get me wrong, I like Indy films. And if you do too, see something like "Mad World".

In closing, don't bother. I have never written an IMDb review before but this film was so bad I felt obligated to warn the General Public away from it.