THE RECALL (2017)

THE RECALL (2017)

Tagline: They've come to claim what's theirs.

(Action, Mystery, Take Us to Your Leader) [R]

Stop you’re whining. Need some cheese with all that damn wine. 

In this one five, really dumb 20-somethings head up to a remote cabin for some fun and relaxation. They have a run-in with a local that does not want them in the area simply referred to as The Hunter. The group suddenly realizes that there is a worldwide alien invasion and mass abductions happening. One of their friends who was basically making every bad decision possible gets abducted by the aliens. It appears The Hunter is actually trying to help them, but who can they trust?  

First off, I don’t understand the people ripping on this as a C-grade movie. It’s not even close to that. Yes, it is a B-movie, but if you watch a decent amount of this stuff, you know it’s not a C-grade film. What the critics are right about is the fact that it’s got a pretty rough script in parts. The background story for what is going on with the aliens and why they are there is extremely stupid and Godophobic, but that happens in sci-fi sometimes. 

From the beginning of this movie to the end, we are taken on a pretty wild but familiar ride. It seems like alien abduction movies follow the formula this one does about 60% of the time every time. The effects are actually pretty fantastic, but gnarly. I wouldn’t call this a horror film, but it definitely has some horror elements. The pacing is actually pretty good, but the further this movie moved along the weirder it got, and not in a good way.

Wesley Snipes (DEMOLITION MAN) is good in this as The Hunter, but a far cry from his top performances. Laura Bilgeri is solid in this as Annie. She is most famous for the TV show “iZombie”. Hannah Rose May (TWISTED SISTERS) is okay for the role, but not amazing. I didn’t like Niko Pepaj as Rob in this. He is most famous for MY SUPER PSYCHO SWEET 16: PART 3. Jedidiah Goodacre from “The Originals” is probably the best part of this movie aside from Snipes. I thought he was good here. RJ Mitte from the TV show “Breaking Bad” is just middle of the road. 

Every once in a while you run into these movies where it becomes pretty clear that they were really just trying to make a pilot for a show, or they had an idea that was just bigger than it needed to be. The ending of this thing just doesn’t make any freakin sense even with the plot we are given. Because of this, even though the quality is actually good, we get a total mess of a movie that really never delivers. 

I am not going to say that this is the worst sci-fi creation I have seen. I have seen a lot of shorts on DUST that are far worse, but the setup seemed to be going in the right direction when things just really kind of fell apart as the film moved along. We didn’t get a good score; we didn’t get a great soundtrack. I guess the pacing was okay, but yeah, that about wraps it up on this one. If I would have been keeping track of all the films I watched in 2017, this would have been near the bottom.

THE RECALL gets a 2 out of 7 and would have been rated worse that than if Snipes wasn’t in it. 

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