Octane

I watched this movie only because I'm a huge Norman Reedus fan, and this was one of the few movies of his I hadn't seen.

One of the biggest problems with this movie was the pace. It spends forty minutes just showing Senga (mom) and Nat (daughter) bickering and arguing, which definitely does nothing to endear Nat to the audience. Then it briefly picks back up... only to slow down again. This definitely isn't something I'd watch on TV, just because I probably ended up skipping through an hour of this hour and forty five minute long movie.

Another problem was actually -and I hate to say it- Norman Reedus's character of the 'Recovery Man'. He pulls the role off well, but... well, there really wasn't enough of a role for him to do much with. He follows the group along, okay, so far so good... But then you get the impression that he's been following them for years as a tow-truck driver, but never gets anywhere, and just happens along Senga and Nat, and decides to sort of follow them, but not really. Then finally at the end, just as his character starts to get sort of interesting, boom. Movie over.

Also, as far as this being a horror, or thriller... There really was no substance to it at all. There's nothing remotely scary, or even chilling. The camera work was amazing, and did give off a creepy vibe, but the story itself was... very blagh, is the only thing I can think of.

Normally, I would say not bad for it's genre, but again, it really doesn't fit into a genre... Comparatively speaking, it wasn't horrible (especially compared to some of the trash passing itself off as good cinema lately) but it just didn't do anything for me. Again, it was more of a 'when is something interesting going to happen?' rather than 'what's going to happen?'.

While driving back home with her spoiled and arrogant teenager daughter Natasha Wilson (Mischa Barton), the divorced and pills addicted Senga Wilson (Madeleine Stowe) stops in a restaurant on the road for a coffee break. When they are leaving the place, Nat invites a mystic and mysterious hitchhiker to travel with them. Later, Nat meets her father Marek (Samuel Fröler) and has a serious discussion with her mother, and she runs away from her mother, joining a weird group. Along the night, Senga tries to find and recover her daughter.

"Octane" is a bizarre movie, having an excellent and intriguing beginning (the first fifty or sixty minutes), but ending in a complete mess. The style in the beginning recalls David Lynch, or David Cronenberg, with bizarre situations, but the conclusion is very ridiculous. I do not know what is recently happening with the writers of screenplay of horror movies: they create good plots with intriguing idea, but the conclusions are horrible. Just as an example, "Gothika", "Jeepers Creepers", "The Sin Eater" and "Dreamcatcher" are in this situation. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Octano – O Caminho do Mal" ("Octane – The Way to the Evil")

The pitch sounded good - a cult of modern day vampires stalking victims on freeways and neon lit service stations. The cast suggested quality - Madeline Stowe as the estranged mother, Bijou Phillips as the kidnapped daughter and John Rhys-Myers as the cult leader. So what happened?

As ever the script was mishandled or badly developed. The protagonists, mother and daughter are decidedly unlikeable and the POV of the narrative makes the mistake of switching sides half way through. As with George Sluizer's The Vanishing, the story should have stayed with the protagonists search for her missing loved one, but instead it focuses on the tearaway daughter and her frolics with a laughable cult of blood drinking travellers. What narrative there is soon disintergrates into a pop video and attempts to salvage the film with a third act denoument in a factory treads into Ed Wood territory.

So much for the much trumpeted Random Harvest/Four Horsemen british horror slate. Heads should roll for this one.

This is a strange movie with a super cast. No wonder it isn't famous or didn't do to well despite the talent.

Mischa Barton at her prettiest, Madeleine Stowe post lip job but still lovely, Jonathan Rhys Meyers at his most way off. What more could you want? A good story. It's a strange mix of thriller horror cult with vampire like blood stuff going on.

A mother and daughter are on the road but get mixed up in strange cult led by JRM. There are slow moments then some horror and action. It's all rather distasteful and meaningless and the story isn't well written. Things don't really add up to much or come together well.

Only worth watching if you are want to see the main stars in an obscure movie.

While a lot of people are going to disagree with me, I think "Octane" (aka "Pulse") is an underrated horror movie. The film begins with a horrible car accident scene, where a dying man is suffering within the wreckage. A squad of impostor medical workers show up on the scene, but soon scramble to leave the scene after the actual medical crew arrives. We are then introduced to Senga Wilson (Madleine Stowe) and her teenage daughter, Natalie (Mischa Barton), who are on a late-night road trip on their way back home. Senga gets tired at the wheel, nearly crashing the car, but insists that she's fine and that they need to get home because Nat has school the next morning. After convincing her mother to stop, Nat and Senga enter a truck stop for a coffee-break. The people within the truck stop seem a little weird too. After picking up a disappearing hitchhiker (Bijou Phillips), Senga and Nat get into a heated argument, and Natalie runs off with the hitchhiker (who re-appears) and a group of strange people. Now it's up to Senga to get her daughter back from the blood-letting cult, with the help of a truck-driver (Norman Reedus) who also is aware of the psychotic blood-drinkers.

The whole film's idea and premise is intriguing, albeit a little strange. While this film may seem like a clichéd horror flick, "Octane", also known as "Pulse" from the video release, has a lot more going for it. The story is fairly well-written, the cinematography is very stylish and adds an eerie texture to the movie, the music is surreal and fitting, and the performances were all-around well done. The foreboding atmosphere of no escape is extremely consistent throughout the film, giving the movie a surreal and nightmarish feeling that works for the film's benefit. The entire thing almost seems like one big bad dream that you can't escape, and I think that is what made this film so interesting to me.

The movie was nicely shot and has some really eerie sequences tied into the plot, mostly Senga's encounters with the bizarre, extensive group of cult members that seem to run the entire area, mostly in the strange little off-road truck stops along the way. The opening is a great start, and the last twenty minutes or so- while they are a little strange - work out well and were all the more bizarre. Madeleine Stowe and Mischa Barton have surprisingly good chemistry, and play their roles as the troubled single-mother and the rebellious, bratty teenage daughter. I like both Stowe and Barton as actresses, and they do a good job here. The rest of the cast gives good performances also, nothing I saw was necessarily bad.

Although "Octane" has a few minor flaws (mostly some of the semi-confusing material that the plot revolves around and leaves unexplained), the film is done with a distinct surreal style, and uses some great imagery and a haunting score. While most people disagree, I think this film isn't nearly as bad as the reputation it seems to have. Granted, it's one strange movie, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's bad. 7/10.