The Objective

This movie is an amazing blend of science fiction, horror, and thrills.

A CIA agent recruits a couple grunt soldiers to track down a religious leader in Afghanistan to interview him.

But the soldiers soon find out that this is just a deception to lure them deep into a remote region of Afghanistan. What follows is a thrilling, scary, and exciting film that almost never lets up until the ending.

The writing is great, there are no over the top lines and long philosophical battles between characters, this is a movie about soldiers and they speak and act accordingly. The acting is fantastic, characters seems genuinely scared and nervous whenever appropriate. And the plot is a fantastic twist on the usual 'small company' war story movie as it adds elements of supernatural horror and psychological terror as the main antagonists instead of rival soldiers.

The cons are the slightly low budget special effects at some points, instead of showing poorly done CGI, I would have opted for the 'less is more' approach and focused on characters reactions to the supernatural phenomenon instead. The ending was a bit disappointing as well as there is very little concrete resolution but with some creative assuming and inference it is relatively obvious as to what happens to each individual character.

If you like horror or thriller movies or just want to see a fresh idea then absolutely give this movie a chance. It's a bit nerve wracking if you're watching it in the dark and definitely not for children. Adults however, especially those into film, this deserves at least rental.

The Objective is, in many ways, reminiscent of science-fiction movies of old, particularly the 70s. But whether it was intentional of Daniel Myrick or it simply is a coincidence, I wouldn't know. One thing is for sure, the real magic and strength of older science-fiction classics is not fully conjured here.

This small-budget movie's premise is simple but opens many possibilities. An elite military commando is sent on a mission in the tensed, war-torn present-day Afghanistan. They are led by a mysterious government operative. Their "Objective" is relatively unclear but considering the risks taken, the stakes must be high. As the story unfolds, the mystery remains and the plot thickens but we are still left with a sour taste as the development and tension doesn't pay off much.

There's a mish-mash of elements here that have been a success in other works and movies. Shades of The Andromeda Strain. Shades of Aliens. Shades of Space Odyssey, of Altered States and of old Bermuda Triangle Movies. More than anything, with just a little rework, this could have been a solid X-Files movie. CIA agent Ben Keynes could easily become FBI agents Mulder and Scully, which would have made things much more dynamic.

One of the biggest problem The Objective suffers from is an underdeveloped protagonist and cardboard peripheral characters. One of the secrets to the success of Aliens is that James Cameron, in a much busier storyline, was able to present his space marines as more than mere Alien-hamburgers. In just a few lines, or a few silent frames, we are exposed to colorful personalities and the various interactions between them. In The Objective, not only are the special force members absolutely bland, but they don't even interact in interesting ways with the plot or the main character. When a film-maker introduces characters that are obvious plot tools, I call this weak film-making. But when such characters aren't even effective tools, I call this awful film-making. And that's unfortunately the case here.

As for the actual plot... suffice it to say it is intriguing. A few hints are given here and there in the movie that might help figure out what the shocking resolution means. We are firmly in speculative science-fiction at times, much like old sci-fi. This makes this flawed movie a valid entry for fans of the genre but others would be better off passing.

This is still a solid effort by Daniel Myrick and commendable on an $8,000,0000 budget. But it seems a less ambitious, more tightly knit plot would have been preferable over too large a scope.

Afghanistan November 2001 and the Taliban who have ruled the country under a jackboot for several years have been ousted . A CIA operative is embedded with an American special forces team and leads them on a secret mission in the South of the country . After a fire fight with the Taliban where several insurgents are killed the SF team are puzzled in finding the bodies of the dead have disappeared , almost as if they'd never existed

I've got to put my hand up and say I knew this was a cross genre movie before I watched it . If you're expecting a straight laced action thriller set in the 'Stan then you might be surprised as to where this is heading . Director Daniel Myrick does play up to the film being set in a very real time and place , giving the movie an almost documentary look with hand-held cameras and cinema verite style but this isn't how the film progresses

Foreshadowing is a difficult thing . Play your hand too soon and the audience might be one step ahead of the characters and boredom sets in , play it too late and the audience will feel cheated so the writers deserve some credit in keeping the audience intrigued . I did have a rough idea where everything was heading and was still interested , though wasn't entirely gripped . Some credit too for bringing in a little bit of past history to Afghanistan involving Alexander The Great's ill fated expedition to the country and the reference of the British retreat from Kabul in the 19th Century . A graveyard of empires indeed

Everything's chugging along nicely and THE OBJECTIVE is a engaging little horror/war film with some good locations and a small non star cast . The problem lies in the last five minutes which I had difficulty in understanding . Again it's not down too much or too little foreshadowing but the fact it remains unexplained which diluted my enjoyment of the film slightly which I was enjoying up to this point

The only original idea in this movie is to unapologetically use an actual, on-going and bloody war as a superficial backdrop to a pointless and hackneyed plot. The crew seemed like a good bunch of guys, and I'm sure they had a ton of fun in Morocco filming this. Too bad nobody has done the hard work of coming up with a coherent vision, purpose and narrative; of aligning location, characters and story; of coming up with a meaning or a graceful way of avoiding imposing a meaning; or, at the very least, of making an engaging thriller.

Stephanie Martin's cinematography, however, did make the movie much more bearable. Well-done and beautiful. Even stunning at times.

The score was quite good as well, I thought.

I was drawn in by the concept, though I think that people expecting a traditional ghost story may be a bit disappointed by the lack of exposition, plus the lack of a tidy conclusion that draws everything together. Much like The Blair Witch Project, the ending is ambiguous, leaving you to draw your own conclusion as to what just happened. If you happen to be familiar with Middle Eastern occultism and mythology, you'll probably recognize a lot of themes and concepts, but if your knowledge is limited to Disney's Aladdin, I think you'll be completely lost, due to the lack of exposition or explanation. The most interesting aspect to this movie, that draws it away from being your normal ghost story, is that the supernatural events are couched in terms of UFO lore. Are the antagonists insurgents? Ghosts? Interdimensional travelers? UFO aliens? Djinn? Who knows. In the end, it's not really all that important. It is the melding of these two similar yet disparate themes (contemporary UFO conspiracy theories and traditional mythology) that make this movie more interesting than if it had just gone one way or the other. The problem is that this is basically a rehash of The Blair Witch Project, with people descending into mutinous fist-fights, getting lost in areas that defy both maps and local knowledge (with the requisite compass going haywire), and straaaange symbols that seem to be part warning and part curse. In fact, I felt like I was watching a strange mix of The Blair Witch Project (which I disliked quite a lot) and Apocalypse Now (which I really enjoyed), with elements of Close Encounters mixed in, near the climax. I think this works better than BWP (partly because the acting was so horrible in BWP), but it still ultimately fails, because, like BWP, it's basically just a bunch of guys walking around, seeing increasingly spooky stuff, with no real payoff at the end. In that sense, maybe it's more of an "experience" than it is storytelling, and how much you enjoy this movie will probably hinge on whether you're looking for an interesting experience or conventional storytelling.