Two stars. But the film has three points worth noting.
1. A Sino-Australian co-production. Produced and distributed by the Chinese side, produced by the Australian side. In my impression, it is a relatively pure co-production film in recent years, but this director who was a Hollywood special effects director made it have no Chinese or Australian flavor (in text and video), and it is a new Hollywood adventure film. A group of people, either for human or commercial purposes, go to an archaeological site, encounter unknown creatures, and fight against the evil spirits of history. The characters are flat, and the character settings are exactly the same as in a casual disaster adventure film.
2. The logical loopholes in the traditional typical and mediocre commercial disaster adventure film. When did we start watching a disaster adventure film, we didn't care about the preparations before the action scenes (such as the formulation of rescue plans, the explanation of the background of the story)? Even if it is mainly based on martial arts, literary drama is also very important. It not only connects the text structure, but also relieves visual fatigue, guides suspense and lays the groundwork, and expresses feelings and values. When the foreplay logic of an adventure film cannot stand up to scrutiny, it will inevitably affect the logical direction of the adventure (how to rescue, how to escape?), so that the audience can only focus on the special effects pictures. The spiders in the film are indeed very realistic and disgusting. The special effects team spent 15 months and it was impossible for them to fail. However, during the course of watching, there was no clue when the spiders were going to come out. The close-ups of the spiders only increased. Just nausea. In other words, the spiders only caused the visual horror and not the psychological horror, because they all appeared to have no intelligence.
3. Imagery and scene selection for disaster films. It is a common choice to co-produce a disaster film, because it does not involve cultural and political topics, just plug in people who speak various languages and it will be done. See Cloverfield's Paradox). It is worth thinking about what kind of creature to shoot. From the earliest great white shark, the series of wild python disaster, crocodiles, bugs, bears, mosquitoes, many creatures have been photographed. Spiders have been filmed before, but not a classic. So the production team of Mystery Nest was probably thinking, hey, shooting a spider is quite new, we want to make these realistic spiders a nightmare for the audience for a lifetime. (Go away, don't send.) Another is the scene. In the sea, on land, in the sky, underground, in the Milky Way, in other universes, in other dimensions... Mystery Nest chose underground. Of course, this is in line with the spider growth environment. I don't know whether it was the spider that was chosen first or the cave that was chosen first... But the film didn't capture the horror of the cave. It was a small, dirty, dark underground, so atmosphere. Cave films even became a genre after Dark Invasion. It's a pity that the director didn't shoot anything new. I miss "Looking for the Dragon".
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