STAND OFFReal Life Glitch Productions |
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This is a film that cannot be rated on any technical or categorical level. STAND OFF is the type
of movie that draws its audience based upon its poster and logline. You find this film on Netflix,
and will finally click on it when you're looking for a guilty pleasure movie.
To be truly critical: the cinematography and audio are flawed, the VFX call attention to
themselves for being cartoonish, the entire story is cliched and offers nothing new to a tired
subgenre, the dialog is always on-the-nose and each scene of the film is loaded with about 70
percent filler material.
But, to criticize, I must ask if this film does what it intends to do. It is a guilty pleasure film. Its audience doesn't care about any of the things listed above. This is a horror movie on the same level that SHARKNADO or PIRANHACONDA are horror movies. They don't actually scare anyone. You watch them to see what they will come up with next.
However, unlike those movies, ones from Asylum that air on the Sci-Fi Network, STAND OFF makes a brave decision: it never becomes self-aware. And that's what this reviewer really enjoyed here. There were no winks to the camera to say, "Yes, we know this is silly, just go with it." The filmmakers took the risk of making the audience think that they were inept. The lead actors never tried to oversell their hammy dialog. The lead, played by Bill Kennedy, won me over early. How serious can you place an ex-special agent with the name JC Crome? He played it serious, like, Cannon Films serious. He makes the audience team up with him in the same way that we teamed up with Chuck Norris in all his 80s action films.
But, the way this film works is that the audience is in on it. For example, during the first zombie horde fight, the one in the bunker with the three leads, there's probably about fifty to sixty zombies killed. Early on, I saw one, a blonde kid, with the zombie makeup, a white t-shirt and jeans. I thought, "He looks like the 'I like turtles kid'". He got shot and killed. Then, a moment or so later, I see the same kid, now wearing a green t-shirt.
There will come a point during this scene where anyone paying attention will realize that they are watching the same ten or so people getting killed over and over again. And, it's hysterical! See, audiences are so smart nowadays. They see everything. And, this film has so much to spot and pick up on.
Despite the jerky handheld camerawork, the lighting flaws, the rough sound... They made a movie on the cheap. The real cheap. And, for an audience that is into that, this film can be a real treasure.
And this is how STAND OFF works. It is a true guilty pleasure. The audience KNOWS what happened behind the scenes. They know what to expect from this movie because they've seen the same storyline over and over again. It's almost as if STAND OFF invites us behind the scenes and lets us know.
The one unforgivable flaw of this film, the one that can't just be written off as a guilty pleasure, is the run time. STAND OFF barely hits the standard feature time, but truthfully, it only manages to give about fifteen minutes of actual story. This made for long stretches of time where the stakes weren't raised, dialog scenes with way too much dialog. Action scenes that just keep doing the same thing, shot after shot.
Not to mention a ten-minute long credit sequence that shows outtakes. Outtakes? After a horror film? Come on, now you're seriously trying to pad the runtime. Instead of story, the filmmakers gave me filler material. STAND OFF will never progress beyond its guaranteed audience, because everyone not in the guaranteed audience demographic will frequently find themselves getting bored. If this were either shot or recut as a twenty-five minute film, with tighter pacing, so that people could get pulled in without already being dedicated to low-budget amateur zombie films.
And, that's unforgivable, because I think of what a tight, short film version of STAND OFF could be: where viewers aren't getting bored, but instead, happily awaiting each familiar guilty pleasure. That should be the aim of every filmmaker. Don't stretch for a feature. Make the film only as long as it needs to be.
But, to criticize, I must ask if this film does what it intends to do. It is a guilty pleasure film. Its audience doesn't care about any of the things listed above. This is a horror movie on the same level that SHARKNADO or PIRANHACONDA are horror movies. They don't actually scare anyone. You watch them to see what they will come up with next.
However, unlike those movies, ones from Asylum that air on the Sci-Fi Network, STAND OFF makes a brave decision: it never becomes self-aware. And that's what this reviewer really enjoyed here. There were no winks to the camera to say, "Yes, we know this is silly, just go with it." The filmmakers took the risk of making the audience think that they were inept. The lead actors never tried to oversell their hammy dialog. The lead, played by Bill Kennedy, won me over early. How serious can you place an ex-special agent with the name JC Crome? He played it serious, like, Cannon Films serious. He makes the audience team up with him in the same way that we teamed up with Chuck Norris in all his 80s action films.
But, the way this film works is that the audience is in on it. For example, during the first zombie horde fight, the one in the bunker with the three leads, there's probably about fifty to sixty zombies killed. Early on, I saw one, a blonde kid, with the zombie makeup, a white t-shirt and jeans. I thought, "He looks like the 'I like turtles kid'". He got shot and killed. Then, a moment or so later, I see the same kid, now wearing a green t-shirt.
There will come a point during this scene where anyone paying attention will realize that they are watching the same ten or so people getting killed over and over again. And, it's hysterical! See, audiences are so smart nowadays. They see everything. And, this film has so much to spot and pick up on.
Despite the jerky handheld camerawork, the lighting flaws, the rough sound... They made a movie on the cheap. The real cheap. And, for an audience that is into that, this film can be a real treasure.
And this is how STAND OFF works. It is a true guilty pleasure. The audience KNOWS what happened behind the scenes. They know what to expect from this movie because they've seen the same storyline over and over again. It's almost as if STAND OFF invites us behind the scenes and lets us know.
The one unforgivable flaw of this film, the one that can't just be written off as a guilty pleasure, is the run time. STAND OFF barely hits the standard feature time, but truthfully, it only manages to give about fifteen minutes of actual story. This made for long stretches of time where the stakes weren't raised, dialog scenes with way too much dialog. Action scenes that just keep doing the same thing, shot after shot.
Not to mention a ten-minute long credit sequence that shows outtakes. Outtakes? After a horror film? Come on, now you're seriously trying to pad the runtime. Instead of story, the filmmakers gave me filler material. STAND OFF will never progress beyond its guaranteed audience, because everyone not in the guaranteed audience demographic will frequently find themselves getting bored. If this were either shot or recut as a twenty-five minute film, with tighter pacing, so that people could get pulled in without already being dedicated to low-budget amateur zombie films.
And, that's unforgivable, because I think of what a tight, short film version of STAND OFF could be: where viewers aren't getting bored, but instead, happily awaiting each familiar guilty pleasure. That should be the aim of every filmmaker. Don't stretch for a feature. Make the film only as long as it needs to be.