Better Late Then Never

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

**** May contain strong spoilers ****This is a review made by StoneDraim... and that means that if you want to read a probably different kind of review, keep reading....This is my personal experience, my personal point of view/perspective and my personal opinion... and my opinion is just one of like 7 billions in this world.Quality of the movie filmed in is kind of grey and "gives the impression of a cheap movie". The music opening the movie is all around lousy in the fact that the piece of sound is totally apart from what would be appropriate for the script; a girl runs through the forest with blood on the waist. A serial killer looking a little like Leatherface (Texas Chainsaw Massacre) is going behind her, chasing her, just as in Friday the 13th. A shot shows that the girl is running away and is at least like 40 metres away from the girl. Then suddenly another shot is showing the killer and he's like 20 metre behind her....she is running, he is walking. What!? The synthesizer sounds creating the music and the beat also gives the impression of a cheap and bad production. At the same time as the girl is running, two men are fighting in the woods. Very bad acting and clear missed fighting hits, as I could see after like 10 seconds that they miss each other clearly. The testosterone sign that they are "very cool and very hard" is just so lame directed and overexplicit that the poor actors is shown even worse than they probably are. The blood and the dirt in their faces screams out; "Hey...look...we can use this kind of make-up to save money!". One of the guys look a little like TOm Cruise; I imagine that the trick is to get a actor that looks alike another well known actor to draw audience. When the fighting guys starts to talk....OH MY... OH MY....the terrible acting, the terrible dialogue. They are fighting at a completely different location with green surroundings... the girl is running in snow. The fact can be that there can be snow and green trees close to each other...but... COME ON! How could they hear her scream far away besides when they are fighting? On top of that, one of the guys says that there is a girl being killed right now.... HOW....HOW could he know that? This manuscript is so bad that I seriously started to think about filing a complaint for emotional distress. The lighting shifts from take to take.... sometimes even when the two guys talk to each other... from a moody grey dawn to suddenly bright light into the next second..... really!? I continued watch for like three minutes and could write...oh, let's say 2 pages just about errors, bad sound editing, bad manuscript, illusive small things happening all the time. OK...so this is just like 10 minutes into the movie.... should I ramble on, or am I coming across to you?(I know there were two guys in Sweden writing and filming a short psychological thriller for about 20 years ago, as a master thesis. They were total amateur and their friend played the main character (that was in fact I who played that role). The name of the movie were "Skendöd" (eng.: Apparent dead / Apparently dead) and my point here is; that movie were better and more professional than this one.)Over to the movie as a product: - The production : Do I really need to write more here? - The actors : Do I really need to write more here? - The story : A serial killer chasing for more victims taking the nipples of women. Could have been an almost approved thing going on here....and now.... just leave me alone. - Entertainment : Entertained to compare this "production" to other great productions... seeing and appreciating good quality movies. Interesting as reference to bad movies. Because this is poor. - Age : Just. Forget. It.2,3 out of 10. (The final rate is based most on my own entertainment of the movie. 3 Bad. Weak. Foul. 2 Amateur, small-time, bad... and misconduct.)

Got this film from HMV last week & made plans to watch the film because of how interesting it looked, DVD case & Trailer wise, though I was skeptical & shady about this film due to previous films of the same caliber which had the following things: Short run time, Epic DVD case, little known actors, self scored music, bad pacing, crappy effects & little known film making crew. Though I have seen some good straight-to-DVD films like this, I was still shady about it & didn't expect it to be amazing! The film is about 4 actors starting out in a Reality TV Show & whoever wins gets £1 million in prize money & gets to be the lead role in a Horror Film! That's the basic plot here & doesn't really explain a lot as I'll tell you at the end of this review.This film was decent, not epic, but decent. There were some pretty gory moments! It didn't disappoint in terms of blood & gore! Not to mention the villain was pretty creepy & terrifying! They surrounding scenery of the wooded area was another great visual added in too.But the bad & clichéd things I didn't like was the isolated story, the watery acting, the weak dialogue & the unconvincing story! It seemed all too rushed & quite thin, but what do you expect from a straight-to-DVD film with little to very unknown actors/actresses! But still this film seemed pretty weak & made on the cheap at points!But I'd say the biggest downfall was the ending! Yes, it was a f**king cliff hanger, but wait no the film just ended! Just like that! It wasn't even a damn cliff hanger let alone a decent ending to a film! It didn't even look like a cliff hanger ending it was that random, you were just getting into it & bam! The end! It was such a big cheat as well! I was seriously pi$$ed off! It left me feeling empty & really deprived of what I wanted to know, I mean I've seen some bad endings to films but this...!The ending costed my review a good couple of stars & as a result, I give this film a 3/10, It had gore & violence, but among other things in the clichéd straight-to-DVD films the ending just killed it entirely!

I must say that I was not expecting much but I was totally blown away with this movie, one of the best horror movies I think I have ever seen. The director, producer, writers and, of course, the cast have created a movie that will not easily be forgotten. I can't wait to see more of their excellent work. Don't miss a work of pure genius and imagination. I have already seen it 4 times and will shortly be seeing it again as every time I see it, I notice something different. For example, last time I watched I noticed a group of goblins, obviously drunk, doing a Zulu Warrior whilst. Another time I noticed crocodiles fighting anacondas and I realized what a brilliant touch of avant-garde it was. So subtle and such a creative image by the producer particularly as the scene took place in Kew Gardens.Do not miss this amazing movie.

I'm attracted to bad movies, not because I like to trash them, or disrespect them ( although sometimes I have to admit, I do get enjoyment out of that!), it's because I am not always convinced that the movie is really that bad. I think horror movies are very difficult to create in a "good" manner, and by that, I am saying that I feel it is very hard to create a good horror movie, simply because there is so much at stake. One of the added pressures to a horror movie, is that your audience is either eager to be scared, or they want to see some pretty decent gore effects. When both those elements go wrong, along with a weak script and terrible acting, and lots of boring sequences going on, we can safely assume the movie sucks, am I wrong? This is the case with Playing With Dolls. First of all, our viewer is going to be raged at the end of watching this, knowing by the time it is all over, that they were 100 percent mislead by the title and the cover art movie poster. See that scary looking guy on the DVD cover? Guess what? He's not that scary in the movie, simply because he isn't doing anything but a lot of walking. Is walking scary? I walk all the time, it's how I transport myself, did somebody find a way to make it bring chills down the spine? If they did, then the frightening aspects do not exist in Playing With Dolls! And, that's another thing, why was the movie called Playing With Dolls? It should have been called Playing With Cameras, because I saw more cameras then dolls! ( The only doll I saw was the Russian actress, oh, what a doll!) Our movie opens up with a pretty graphic kill right off the bat, within the first five minutes. We see a camera embedded in a tree ( what...the...puck?) We see a man viewing what goes on on the footage of the camera. HEY! It's Richard Tyson, remember this guy!? He was the bully in the 1987 classic Three O'Clock High. Wow! Have you climbed the ranks since then? In this dark, twisted, perverted, mind numbing , dumbfounded joke of a film? Why all this is happening, I don't know. I actually had more questions by the time the credits roll at the end, then when I started watching it. By the way, it's only an hour and twenty minutes, but it will feel like you were watching it for at least 2 hours, trust me. Boring, not entertaining, and if your not going to put some money into the production, why bother making a movie at all? Step up the game, folks, were getting just a bit fed up with the low budget, poorly executed montages you have the gall to call "movies."