Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

THE DAWN is an example of your usual junk shot-on-video horror movie courtesy of the US of A. The story sees the usual group of boring, brain-dead students heading off to a rural retreat in the woods in order to learn more about indigenous cultures (go figure). After a lot of set up and mucking around, weird things start to happen. Students suffer dreams of rape, a lesbian scene is thrown in for good measure, but the most jaw-dropping moment is the native ritual with the topless girl on the bed. This bit really has to be seen to be believed. The rest runs the gamut of wooden acting and sparse plotting, and it really is a travesty of film-making.

It's official, "The Dawn" is the worst movie I've ever seen! I can credit this complete pile of crap with only a singular attribute... The cover looks creepy. PERIOD!Under the cover, I can only hope that this was made by starving, crack addicted, film school drop-outs with nothing else to do with their buzz. The dialog is obviously unscripted. Nothing but mindless banter accented with an overkill of screaming (at what!?) The characters were the lamest group of needy individuals however as a man, I was at first intrigued by the lesbians, but even lost interest in them within the first 3 minutes or so. As for the plot (plot?), I think if there was ever a shred of evidence of what this was supposed to be, it got swept off the cutting room room floor by the janitor. Which leads me to the director Linwood D Neverson. Here's a man with balls. He edited his own direction and was left standing alone with nothing more than what should be an embarrassment. It also happens to be produced by Linwoods brother Darryl L Neverson and Agustin. At least Agustin had enough common sense not to strap his surname to it. As far as the camera crew, the lighting is poor and there's a scene that must have been filmed by a drunk monkey with a cam-cord and a real bad case of the hic-cups. The soundtrack is poorly edited rap/hip-hop. Though I myself don't like the style of music(?) at all, those who do can reap the crap of rap here.All in all "The Dawn" is by far, the biggest waste of celluloid I ever had the burden to witness. But I pays my moneys, I's gots to sees it.But the cover is cool.

To be fair, I only watched an hour of this flick. To really be fair, whoever made this piece of camcorder crap should refund my money I paid Blockbuster. I should charge them for having to sit through an hour of this "horror movie".....Well, in the hour I did see......there was a scene in a classroom, with all of the students being 20 something Z list actors. The dialogue was laughable.....then there was a scene where they find a dead body in the school (everyone screams and then walks away).....then they decide to go to the teachers house so they can perform a sacrifice (?)...they get to the house....the lesbians get undressed and lay around on their bed.....one gets dream raped by the teacher (?)....two go into the woods to smoke pot....that was about it for me......Just a bunch of crappy dialogue you cannot hear half of the time and crappy rap music with mexicans screaming/chanting over it........Maybe the last 15 minutes or so that I did not see were kick ass.......Seriously doubt it.....AVOID AVOID AVOID......makes the acting in Children of the Living Dead seem like Oscar worthy performances.

OK, I gave this movie a 2/10 instead of a 1, for the slight twist at the end. This movie is horrible, do not rent it. I rented it based on the cover and blurb on the back and thought "Hey this could be good," because I like a lot of straight to video horror. But this movie is not worth any money. I won't really say anything else about it til a few more people post, I don't want to give away all that happens, or as you'll see, all that doesn't. OK so I added the spoiler warning, you only see how 2 people die, the rest you kind of just have to imagine. It's pathetic, the acting is terrible, and the camera work is supposed to add to the suspense, but could leave you nauseated.