The Culling

I watched this solely because of Sumpter as I want to see him in more roles as I feel his only memorable one is still Peter Pan. I feel that him and Elizabeth were the only decent actors but the movie falls flat. The story was cliché and not engaging. There were virtually no scary parts at all and the gore was minimal. I was hoping for some good creepy atmosphere or if that was absent, at least some excessive gore but sadly the movie lacked both those elements. There was no character development and the writers clearly hated all their characters. I also do not mind when the story is not explained fully such as Night of the Living Dead; it leaves a certain amount of mystery to the movie. This movie, although it did not explain everything, was completely uninteresting to the point that I did not want to know and not knowing made the film even worse. Stay away.

I am sad to have to advise my fellow horror nerds to stay clear of The Culling. This is another horrid low-budget attempt at making a generic horror film of very poor quality on many levels. It is actually quite cringe-worthy. The Culling primarily looks remarkably cheap and suffers from amateur cinematography at its worst; it really does look like a High School project due for a C-, and this is if the teacher was very, very kind. The acting and the behaviour of the characters reveal the awful writing and the cheesy/terrible directing from Rustam Branaman. The plot-setup isn't worth much either; it has been seen countless times: a group of friends go for a drive, then they have to stop at a remote location, etc. The plot is just taken from other horror movies and is completely uninspired and bland. And the execution actually tested my patience. The Culling drives each and every stereotypical character home like it was created to fit the generic pattern from the 70's: the Christian, non-alcoholic virgin is the good one, the marijuana smoker is somehow violent and obnoxious, the pushy drinker-boyfriend tries to pressure the good virgin to stray from her obvious Christian path, and her unchaste friend is just messed up. The whole problem with this particular generic type of friend-group isn't the fact that it is too basic, but that it hasn't got the actors who can act the parts in a convincing manner. Stay clear!

I'm going to try and avoid repeating what most other reviewers have said since I agree with the majority of the negative comments. That being said, this movie should NOT have sucked as badly as it did. The production values were decent. The cinematography was decent. The general dialog between the five main characters was reasonable and believable. The actresses were attractive, well-spoken and not terrible actors. The male actors were mostly not terrible.

So why did this thing suck so badly? The editing was problematic as was obvious by the shortened film length. I suspect a fair amount was cut as what did appear was choppy and not very cohesive. However, while I think the directing was weak the worst thing about the movie was the script. It's unusual to find even a bad B-movie with as unbelievable and contrived story line as what ran through this dog. Even stoned/intoxicated people don't do as many stupid things as these nitwits did.

In fact, I have to admit to being rather shocked that within the first 10 minutes or so the main actors were doing things that a 10 year old wouldn't do in the same circumstances. Despite being grossly disappointed I soldiered on hoping that each unbelievable screw-up would be the last. Now I'm embarrassed to admit that I finished it.

Nonetheless, this could have been a decent, scary flick if it even had the slightest lick of a story. But it didn't. There is no story here and nothing to see except a couple of pretty young actresses scarring their film resume by having their name on this garbage. Don't waste your time folks. You will be left feeling like an idiot because you watched the entire thing. This dog won't hunt...EVER!

UPDATE: 14/02/17 Update: I HATE SHILLS!!! Since I wrote this review several more, ahem, "Sparkling" reviews have appeared. This film is still VERY BAD!!! Please don't say no one warned you!!! Good Luck!

A trip with friends takes a sinister turn when they meet a strange little girl on the side of the road.

The plot is very simple. The film is easy to understand, even if you step away from the TV for a few minutes. The plot is a bad point of the film, because I believe the story could be better told.

The production is bad, with few scares, very poor makeup, bad costumes and very bad special effects.

There are few characters, and the cast is made up of good (not excellent) actors. Special mention goes to Virginia Williams.

In a film like this, don't expect an electrifying ending. The ending is bad too!

I know the whole process of making a movie isn't the easiest task in the world, but this movie fails so horribly you are angry that your time is gone. My wife and I had to watch another movie after this to get the bad taste out of our mouth and it still didn't help much. The acting was horrible, i was constantly taken out of the situation by all actors, I'm no Oscar winning actor but I'm POSITIVE i could have sold what was happening better than this group. The story didn't make sense, constantly beating around the bush and never goes anywhere. It feels like they are buying time the whole movie and constantly shooting at weird angles so you don't notice that they are shooting all in the same area. The entity was vague, not sure how the girl ties into anything and they acted like she was one of the main parts of the entity and the special effects were horrendous and not making sense. Avoid this movie like the plague