Reminiscence: The Beginning (2014) User Reviews

A series of random scary scenes and apparently no one cares

[luisgentil · 3/10 · 29 October 2015]

I was also fooled by the synopsis and the trailer. I suppose if you read about a horror movie based on physics theories you expect an interesting plot. But this movie has no plot at all. All you get is one of the characters explaining some theory in an extremely broken English, so good luck understanding that.

There are a few good scenes like the ones showed on the trailer, but between those there are painfully slow-paced shots with two characters who are apparently unable to talk about what the hell is going on because of language limitations (why was it written in English anyway?). Halfway through the movie I wondered if it would end with them putting out a hashish pipe and coming back from a really bad trip.

Imagine you are having a series of visions so disturbing you cannot discern what is real and what is not anymore. Someone you know wakes you up and asks what happened and you say "I don't know, let's take a walk/get some rest". This dialogue repeats itself a few times until someone finally says "Uh, a bad dream...? Let's get something to eat."

I agree there must be something wrong with the positive reviews. They are trying to create an Emperor's New Clothes spiral of silence, implying that this movie is so sophisticated it will only appeal to a few select bright minds, when it's simply bad.

IMDb's been hacked--or invaded!

[etim-679-857931 · 2/10 · 19 April 2015]

After reading the other reviews and seeing a score here of 7.9 with over 1170 responses, I was really looking forward to seeing it. But now I can only assume that someone's broken into IMDb and flooded their servers with bogus votes. To think that a movie of this one's pitifully poor quality could have even had that many responses on IMDb is beyond belief. I don't even know where to start--EVERYTHING was bad, the acting, dialogue, story, editing, pacing, camera work, effects, soundtrack, audio levels, etc. etc. etc.

The only positive thing I can say about this vid is that it supports my claim that current technology has become too cheap and too easy to use. Nowadays,any idiot with a few extra bucks can pawn garbage like this off on so many unsuspecting viewers.

Definitely don't pay any money to see this junk and don't waste your time on it unless you can see it in a format that allows you to quickly skip through it to sample just how awful it is. Film students may find it useful though-- for a good laugh.

Unwatchable

[asantoro-65459 · 2/10 · 22 May 2015]

I have no idea how I can write 10 lines about this movie. It easily ranks among the worst movies I've ever been subjected to. It's obvious that those giving it good reviews were either cast or crew, or friends thereof. How? With the exception of one person (all of whom claim to be from the U.S) they all committed numerous grammatical errors in their reviews. And most of them use the same descriptive phrasing - "super scary" or "very unique". The two main actors are not just bad but painstakingly so. As someone else pointed out, it looks like this movie was filmed with an iPhone. Trust me; if you believe the ratings that this movie has presently, you will be sorely disappointed. I gave this movie a 2 instead of a 1 just because there are some nice beach/shoreline scenes.

Very bad, very boring, very bad acting

[Fight_Club_Forever · 1/10 · 17 October 2015]

After watching the trailer I was very curious what this movie is going to be like. I saw a lot of reviews here and the rating was high then (7,9). I don't know where to start how bad this was, WOW! The acting was absolutely horrible, especially the leading actress has a lot of trouble speaking English and I don't understand half of what she says. The "scary" scenes are not scary, just dumb scenes with some special make up and no meaning at all. The whole movie is very boring and the pace is very slow. I really regret it, watching the whole movie, thinking that maybe it's going to get better. It just doesn't. So don't waste your time with this piece of crap and be aware that all the reviews giving it a 9 or a 10 are fake.

Now I see that lot of people are writing about fake votes on this movie. I have to agree, there is no way this movie was rated 10 every time and still is so high when all the real reviews are giving it a 1 and that is what it deserves. I'm sure that the maker of the movie hacked IMDb somehow to get the rates so high.

Painfully awful. IMDb rating system is definitely BROKEN.

[KiKeNiCo · 26 April 2015]

Being a sort of knowledgeable film nerd, sometimes you just have to dive in title vaults to find something new and potentially interesting.Sometimes that vault is IMDb listings: sometimes that path is one to hell.

How this inarguably piece of garbage keeps a 8 score from 2000 votes and some ranking out of IMDb listings is beyond comprehension..if not for a clever advertising ruse. Because that's all this film is: a neat publicity stunt.

All you find around the web about this film is an awesome plot with some deep explanation of characters, atmosphere and weird mythology, a cleverly put trailer and a nifty poster to awaken your interest..which it does. Problem is the real thing is a pretentious boring and lame plot less video feature.

The acting is atrocious, so thank god for that cheap ominous and uninspired soundtrack leveled up the dialogue volume. Editing is just incompetent with some atrocious sense of pace, and continuity is something unheard of for this crew. Photography can redeem like a 1% of the movie, but that's kudos to the beautiful scenery: camera wise, it is submitted to abuse with some of the worst shaky-cam treatments ever, 40% of the whole film is feet frame based, 20% pitch black and the remainder just expressionless embarrassing faces.

And I thought this was a horror film..Well, the horror is real, just fighting the narcotic effect of boredom. A couple of creepy post-prod faces, some overused ffwd editing crap combined with unclever topical imagery out of some 2000's Ringu type film. And a tree; and waves showed in reverse. Creepy.

Don't even waste a glimpse into this thing, don't even remotely believe any of the good reviews out there: don't fall for the con. I should have seen it coming in the atrocious first 5 minutes, but I was naive and hopeful. Serves me right for trusting the internets.Damn.

Do.not.waste.your.time!

[livsii · 1/10 · 2 May 2015]

I don't even know where to begin..

The team behind this movie did excel at one thing -writing fake reviews!

It is the worst movie I have ever seen. Ever. As in, worse than "Van helsing 2" Way way worse!

Of course, the hardest part was the disappointment, first I read the (*FAKE*!!) reviews, and noticed the really High score here on IMDb (8.5 at that point, its still dropping..) and then I watched the trailer -which is good, wish that was the movie! And then.. After days of searching, I finally found the movie! Where to start?

The story-: .. There is none. Time breaks down, now is then, then is now, it could work..but it doesn't

The acting-: I played Snow white In kindergarden, and I was better than these..people. They suck. THEY.CANNOT.ACT! The few lines in this movie are delivered In the most painful, awkward way, they make porn actors look like 1class Hollywood actors.

The "script"-: it makes me wonder if some Turkish guy discovered Google translate and thought "hey now I can write it In English!". English isn't my first language, but I do speak it well enough to know, that this movie wasn't written by someone who speak English (neither does the actors btw.) thankfully the movie consist of just a handful of lines, non of them are important for "the story", you might as well just turn the sound off...

The music-:.. Oh the music. Liked it In the trailer? Sure, dark, creepy, loud.. The director liked the music too! So much that he decided to use it NON STOP throughout the entire movie! After 10 minutes you just wanna turn the sound of, its unbearable!

Camera-: I Think they might filmed it on an IPhone? I have a 3 year old niece, sometimes she will steal my phone, run around with it, 90% of the video will be of her feet. Same goes for this movie.

Scarefactor-: 0. None. This movie is so bad, the only thing that scares you is that it might never end..

This is a bad movie, and I'm pretty easy to satisfy, I'm very easy to scare, I literally passed out when I watched "the woman In Black" but this! Anyone could make this movie, though most would have too much selfrespect and compassion for others to do so. Obviously the Crew behind this movie is writing a ton of positive reviews, and giving the movie high ratings, do not fall for it! I promise you will regret it, this movie should be banned from IMDb..

Awful

[zlatatref · 1/10 · 19 April 2015]

Awful!!!!! First, it was hard to find but when I finally did, I was so disappointed. No appropriate beginning no ending,unnecessary scene with water, stones, trees, water again and actors foot. No dialogues at all,if I haven't read the annotations to the movie, I would have no idea what was the movie about. The most stupid and strange movie with poor acting but such a big rating. Never watching this movie again. Waste of time. The movie has no plot at all, it's just unwatchable psychedelic pictures with no sense. No acting, inappropriate soundtrack and poor operating. Seems like actors were operators at the same time . All in all, just a low-budget movie with no potential. If you want to watch good scary movie, forget about this one.I have no idea how could it get such a good rating, it's misleading

Yeah, I didn't like it either.

[karmauk · 2/10 · 22 May 2015]

Okay, so I watched this film based on the IMDb rating, (at this point, roughly 1300 votes giving a 7.2 rating). After watching maybe 30 seconds, I pressed pause in confusion. You know how when you watch a film, and it's immediately apparent that it's not as good as you thought it was going to be? This was definitely one of those occasions. So, I returned to IMDb to read the reviews.

Having done that, one might conclude that it's one of those classic 'love it/hate it' scenarios - but then I noticed something that seemed a little odd to me. All of the positive reviews appeared to contain the same, or similar, English grammar/syntax errors. Of course, one would never convict on suspicion alone, my suspicion is however, that they're all written by the same person.

Because of that, after years of using IMDb, I wanted to write a review. But wait, I thought, I should at least give the film a chance before coming on here to condemn it.

So I started watching again.

I'm proud to say I managed to watch a whole hour - even though I wanted to turn it off after the first five minute opening scene, and nothing that happened in the subsequent 55 min's did anything other than reinforce that urge.

It's bad. It's really, really bad.

The acting is awful. Though to be fair, a large part of this may be due to the actors maybe not having English as a first language? I'm just guessing.

The storyline just.... well... there isn't one really; far as I can tell. Apparently there's some sort of planetary alignment, or such, that will affect the Earth's magnetic field and cause weird stuff to happen. Whoever made this film took that as licence to make the entire film, (well, the first hour at least) as unintelligible and disjointed as possible. The whole thing consists mostly of long, drawn out photographic type shots or sequences, culminating in something abstract, unexplained or just plain stupid - then jump to the next long, drawn out photographic type shot... etc... etc...

And the music? As has already been suggested by other reviewers - it's incessant. Every single scene, or even sometimes just a change of shot, has its own piece of music. All of which is usually set too loud over the dialogue. And whilst sometimes, the music score and photography may complement each other, the fact it never lets up just serves to spoil the whole thing.

All in all, I'm giving it 2/10. The only reason, despite the phony reviews, it doesn't get a one, is because every once in a while, there's some really nice photography. Also, whenever one of the 'monsters' appears, the makeup/special effects aren't too bad, and just for a split second you think it might be about to get interesting. Unfortunately not the case.

If you're into 'artsy' type films, or you study photography, you may get something out of this - otherwise I'd say it's a fail and give it a miss.

Unwatchable boring tripe

[shende-229-611519 · 1/10 · 20 April 2015]

I don't understand the high ratings except that perhaps the reviewers all worked on the movie or know the actors and director.The music is so annoying I had to shut it off multiple times.It is so slow I fast forwarded several times.The acting is atrocious and if you depend on good acting to get through a movie like I do,this movie will be unwatchable.Artsy fartsy mystery science theater 3000-esque b flick is how I would describe this first attempt by the director.Again the high rating is rigged.This movie had no redeeming qualities.Trust me if you like good horror but appreciate good acting and a logical plot/conclusion-don't bother watching this film...or..go ahead and watch it and see for yourself.Don't rent the DVD or spend a cent on it though!

Slow scenes, fast cuts, no content

[zettaichan · 1/10 · 23 December 2015]

I love terrible horror movies, but this... this doesn't really qualify as a movie. It's more like a long pointless vacation video with some superficial scares edited in. Kind of like Manos: The Hands of Fate.

As others have noted, the high ratings for this movie have to be fake. The positive reviews all employ the same off-key grammar and even use the same phrases. Always doubt reviews that praise a movie for including the most basic building blocks of cinema, like "music that matches with the mood of scenes."

Not to mention all these good reviews that call the plot "very unique" when the premise (characters traveling to alternate universes) has appeared in everything from Star Trek to Sliders to The Butterfly Effect.

The film's tagline claims it's "Based on true physics events and black hole theories" - that's the paper-thin pretext for a series of disjointed "thank goodness it was only a dream!" style scenes, as the characters visit horrific alternate dimensions then escape back to their own, only to do it all over again a minute later. None of these dimensions are different in any way that would increase the budget: it's just the same settings at different times of day, with the same actors in weird makeup or cheap CG effects. Strange, they always go to alternate dimensions where their doppelgangers are creepy. There's no happy alternate universe, just their doubles with rotted faces or ghost makeup or knives covered in fake blood.

The few good horror images in Reminiscence are lifted from other sources, like The Exorcist, The Grudge, and Silent Hill. Most shots are pans over the nice beach scenery, or the ground and feet filmed hand-held by running actors, or the lead actress with her hair blown into her face. You risk getting motion sickness from the hand-held photography, and seizures from the frantic editing that's used during "scary" scenes to cover up for the lack of special effects or decent imagery. This movie gave me a headache.

IMDb needs a report button. This is as bad as it gets.

[daddyslittlebyte · 1/10 · 21 May 2015]

I saw the high IMDb ratings for this, and I'm always thrilled to see any decently rated horror movie. I don't know how they did it but the ratings on this are FAKE. This movie is just terrible. I came to IMDb after watching 30 seconds of this wondering what the heck was going on, then I saw the real reviews. It will only take you 30 seconds to realise how bad this movie is. You can't hear any of the dialogue, I think they used a hand-held camera or phone, certainly no separate audio. The only good thing about this movie is the pretty beach and the box art.

All the positive reviews are from people with only one review, they just made accounts and used a VPN or something.

Scary as hell. This horror movie kicks ass!

[webpun · 9/10 · 14 June 2014]

More scary and more intelligent than many horror films. Very original. The other exiting thing about this movie is, whole movie made by its director Akçay Karaazmak. Trailer took my attention and made me curious but I was not expecting the same from the movie. But, that nice trailer is just nothing compared the movie. They just showed little in the trailer. I am always exited when I watch these kind of horrors. And now what I see is finally a new idea, a new story came to horror.

Beside its scary side, movie also has a dramatic atmosphere which combined with the amazing music and sounds. Director worked very preciously on each scene and compose the music that matches the best with scenes. Its very hard to guess what will happen next in the movie. It has so many great ideas that can make you surprise all the time.

The cast are also very strange characters. You can't understand easily if they are good or no or even can't understand what they really are. Actually movie also effected me in a psychological way. They combined horror scenes with drama and it really effects your mood. And sure the music has a big role in this. Almost all scenes have their own different music.

The other amazing point is the end of the movie. Reminiscence is first the movie of director and actor Akcay Karaazmak. He did a very good job and his movie will bring new point of view to horror cinema.

don't waste your time

[shaunnwmn · 1/10 · 23 April 2015]

I was very disappointed with this film after reading good reviews for it.

To start its very slow to get going, actors speak very quiet whilst annoying and unnecessary piano music keeps getting played.flits from one scene to another with no contuinity of script or lack of, hard to fathom what the hell is going on and why, Im from old school horrors where they kept you on the edge of your seat (this film did but only cos i was clinging on so not to fall off when falling asleep) some scenes made you think why the hell did he/she just do that and others were just like whatever.

If your thinking of making a horror film yourself this is not one that you should try and mimic. Acting poor, storyline poor, scares none, boredom factor 10

The ratings are rigged. Don't waste your time.

[steefophetwerk · 1/10 · 30 May 2015]

So, I did what I usually do before I watch a movie. Read reviews, watched the trailer. It all looked so promising. The reviews were either love it or hate it, but since that is often the case with movies (especially in the horror genre i.m.h.o.) I kinda let that go and gave this movie the benefit of the doubt.

And then I got to watching the movie. I know I am not the first reviewer to say this but I had to pause in full confusion five minutes into the movie. OK, some reviews were bad, but the rating was still high on IMDb. So I didn't expect such a bad beginning of the movie. And I'll be honest: I thought the ones who said it here before me were exaggerating a little. But they weren't.

The movie just doesn't get any better. Lots of feet, lots of beautiful surroundings, no plot, completely unnecessary dialog. And not to be blunt, but absolutely horrible horrible acting. (at least that is one thing that's horror about this movie)

I ranked this movie a one out of ten. Why? Because I'm just not watching the horror genre for a movie's best feature to be nice scenery shots. And yes, there are very nice scenery shots. But if I want those, I'll look up some nice scenery shots. And I was looking for a good horror movie.

I can say I am one of the troopers that watched this horrible movie to the end. Without dying of boredom. If achieving that is on your bucket list, watch this movie and check it off your list. If not, don't waste your time on it.

The word sh*t is not enough to describe it

[pedromcpires · 1/10 · 28 September 2015]

The truth is that something must be wrong with the people who wrote the positive reviews. This film is awful, one of the worst, if not the worst I've ever seen in my life. Please do not spend your precious time watching this crap. The 6.5 IMDb note is surreal, there's absolutely nothing good about it and it's very annoying. I give zero for the acting, another 0 for the screenplay and another 0 for the soundtrack, my 3 year old son can do so much better in the xylophone. I'm so angry right now, because I waste half an hour of my life with this sh*t, that's how long I could take it. I don't even care how it ended, one more minute of viewing I would turn blind. The word sh*t is not enough to describe it, this is a big diarrhea. I think nobody in is perfect mind could watch this until the end. I must go to bed now and try to forget about what I just saw.

Absolutely awful.

[mvern9-1 · 1/10 · 22 May 2015]

This must be one of the worst films I've seen in quite some time.

Unfortunately the director seems to have done every job himself and I think that includes marketing as it looks (painfully obvious) that he's written most of the 'good' reviews on here!

With lines like: 'I am happy that Reminiscence is not a kind of horror film that we usually watch. It is also very interesting that Reminiscence is first movie of Akçay Karaazmak and he made all by himself. Which actually is unbelievable. He wrote, directed, made the visual effects, did the editing, composed the music, even most of the shots are filmed by him.'

It's a shame when you have to create fake accounts to write fake reviews about your own film.

Reminiscence's got bad sound, terrible photography, acting, music, editing and script. Stay clear of this one as you will be wasting your time. Absolutely awful film.

Not Worth A cheap rental.

[sandmpoggenburg · 1/10 · 23 May 2015]

Went to see a scary Movie. Instead wasted time that I will never get back in my life.Awful... don't waste your time. I too saw the 7.0 rating. I have no idea how they got that rating unless they spent the $500,000 budget on it. No plot,no story,terrible music that makes no sense. This movie seems conflicted to be a shaky cam type of movie or a normal movie. This makes the film way too shaky for no good reason.Bad.Bad.Bad.Terrible! How many ways can you call a movie bad. It appeared the main 2 actors were the only 2 in the whole movie. And those 2 actors either had bad scripts to read or are truly terrible as well.

Truly an astonishing achievement in filmmaking

[cuthulumythos · 1/10 · 28 July 2018]

This movie fails on every fundamental level beyond not being a series of moving pictures.

Another entry into the sloppy surrealist film genre

[chaosbaron · 3/10 · 11 November 2015]

Reminiscence appears to be a surrealist horror film, with the plot revolving around magnetic fields and possibly dimensional travel... it was kind of hard to tell. The major and most easily addressable problem with the film is that all of it feels with out purpose. Even the most bizarre surreal films have purpose behind their moments of strangeness. Reminiscence tries to make you feel disoriented or scared with shaky and fast cutting camera work, bizarre scene structure, non linear plot, speeding up or slowing down the camera for a second or two, and quick shots of "creepy images".

To sum up where the film fails, watch the chase scene at the 1 hour mark. What is the point of this scene? How does it enhance the film?

Even hardcore surrealist fans will doubtfully enjoy this one.

What the .. IMDb??

[wildblueyonder · 1/10 · 20 April 2017]

Really? Firstly, the movie isn't in English, as it says in the description. And no subtitles.

Its apparent that the 'score' is completely rigged up somehow, this is becoming really prevalent on this site.

I made it through like 5 minutes (during which there's lots of driving to music shot with someone's cellphone...), and decided to investigate. If you try and sit through this crap all I can say is 'I told you so'.

Great, spooky,very memorable and entertaining

[mereleaserdp · 9/10 · 12 June 2014]

Reminiscence is the first movie of director Akçay Karaazmak and it's almost a very successful horror film. It has very unique script and great atmosphere. There are lots of scenes that will scare the hell out of you. Movie always surprises you with the unexpected events. I liked very much the nature and all those different places in the movie. I can't tell the acting is very good, but movie atmosphere covers the amateur side of the cast. But I should tell that Slovak actress had a good performance. The other thing I really liked was the visual effects. They look very realistic and scary even the movie is not high budget one. Sound design could be better or it's the fault of mixing, I'm not very sure about that. But music is amazing and how it matches with the mood of the scenes is just great. Shortly, great visuals, unique script, very scary atmosphere, little bit poor acting and not a great sound mix but still, Reminiscence is a pretty strong horror film that's not perfect but it's certainly good enough to watch more then one time.

No way this movie has a legit rating 6.1

[mvanhorn73 · 1/10 · 3 November 2016]

No way this movie earned a legit 6.1 rating at the time of this review. No spoilers here other than it was a bad movie. The music was disproportionately loud – so much that it was difficult to hear dialogue between actors. Camera work was choppy and looked unintentionally out of focus. I could not sit through the entire movie because the story-line was so disjointed and nauseating due to unsteady camera shots. It seemed like a failed attempt at being an art film. Luckily, I streamed this movie via a video streaming membership or I would insist on a refund. As other reviews have pointed out do not waste your time or money on this movie. The 6.1 rating has to be due to illegitimate reviews.

Too Boring to Watch to End

[peter-jf · 1/10 · 2 June 2016]

I was fooled by what must be fake positive reviews to watch this.

Thankfully I used an online streaming service so I did not waste money only some of my time on this rubbish.

The first few opening minutes were suitably atmospheric and creepy but it very quickly went down hill. The camera work was bad, so bad that most amateurs would be too ashamed to admit to filming it.

Shaky filming and jump cuts were presumably intentional but I just found them jarring and distracting. The scary bits were not scary as by the time they appeared I was bored and almost ready to give up.

I left the film running for a bit to see if it got any better, on seeing no sign of improvement after another ten minutes I gave up and came here to post this review.

If you are thinking about watching this film I would say do not waste your money or your time.

I'm not into time

[nogodnomasters · 1/10 · 29 March 2018]

Miska (Michaela Rexova) is a theoretical physicist in a sun dress. Her and her friend (Akçay Karaazmak) travel to Cesme, Turkey where she has calculated the magnetic pull of the planets will cause a black hole phenomena. On screen it appears we are watching someone else's bad acid trip with a lousy soundtrack. A pathetic piano? Seriously?

This is supposed to be based on "science" and is basically the same weird science we saw in "Interstellar" when he was in the event horizon of a black hole and was rearranging his library both light years and decades back in time. Now exactly how this phenomenon will play out in reality, provided someone could survive in it, is a guess. This is an artsy film for people who hate acting, dialogue, and sound.

Some use of F-bomb. No sex or nudity in the first half (Sorry my FF button stuck at that point and I went to make a sandwich)

Afterwards I felt like a character in an old Cheech & Chong routine: Kid "Hey Hippie. Wanna buy a watch?" Hippie: "I'm not into time."

Nothing like making science boring. This film made "Primer" look like Oscar material.

A surprise scary movie with many terrific and emotional scenes.

[SkyaTone · 9/10 · 12 June 2014]

Reminiscence is a very unique horror movie produced by Akcay Karaazmak fallows the story about one couple (Michaela Rexova, Akcay Karaazmak), that experimenting time breaks and black holes.

The most interesting thing about this movie is its very unique script. Finally a new horror came out with new ideas and a story. Better than most high budget horror films. The other strange thing is the whole movie production and post production is made by a hand of a one man Akçay Karaazmak, who also played as one of the main characters.

Firstly it's not so easy to understand what's really going on. Movie can confuse you and give you questions. And through the movie maybe you can find your answers.It also makes you to think deeply sometimes. Maybe you won't find your answers at the first time. I can't just tell Reminiscence is a good horror movie, it's more then a good horror. You may find yourself in different moods in different scenes. Mix of horror, drama, sci-fi and melancholy.

I very like the coloring and general mood of the movie. It doesn't look like a block buster but it has its own style and looks different and natural. I still don't understand how this beautiful movie made with that small budget. Maybe that's because all work has done by the directer him self.

There are lots of fighting and scary scenes and the tension is almost never gets down. Movie always keeps the attention of audience. You always expect something but most of the time you see something different from what you expected. And there are very great ideas.

Movie has some weak sides in sound. Sound design is very good and interesting but sometimes some sounds are not very clear. And dialog of characters sometimes are out of the mood. For that, some scenes may look little unprofessional. But I think it's because of the budget. But shortly this movie has a big potential and it looks like Reminiscence 2 will come out as well. Which I will be very happy for that.