Black Wake

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source: Black Wake

This movie is a complete utter waste of time. Do not waste your time I lost an hour and a half of my life. The acting is horrible the plot is horrible.

Boy, does this absolute train wreck of a horror monster flick make for perversely enjoyable viewing on the basis of its sheer jaw-dropping awfulness alone. For starters, lead actress Nana Gouvea makes for a laughably unconvincing scientist, with her heavy accent in particular rendering a lot of her dialogue almost unintelligible. (Fortunately, the makers of this bilge had the good sense to include a few scenes of Gouvea showing off her fine voluptuous figure in a black bikini.) Slumming faded names Eric Roberts as the skeptical Dr. Frank, Tom Sizemore as the irate Detective Michaels, Vincent Pastore as the ill-fated Dr. Jones, and Chuck Zito as the gruff Sheriff Williams are all clearly in this one strictly for the paycheck. Director/co-writer Jeremiah Kipp blends elements of zombie horror, found footage, monsters on the loose, and a Lovecraftian end-of-the-world apocalyptic thriller into such a messy and barely coherent whole that one has to wonder if this guy has any decent grasp of proper narrative construction (the story keeps jumping around all over the place with often jarringly sloppy and disastrous results). The crummy cut-rate CGI effects add further abject insult to already appalling injury. Plus there's even a few gratuitously bared breasts tossed in for trashy good measure. A total fiasco that's nonetheless still loads of fun in a Grade Z schlockoid sort of way.

BLACK WAKE is a mish-mash of horror and sci-fi themes, carried out on a disappointing indie budget which really isn't up to much. Part of the film is found footage of some kind of coastal zombie epidemic; then there's a woman talking to the camera for long stretches, only included to pad out the story and provide exposition. Eric Roberts and Tom Sizemore appear in brief cameos, and then right at the end Cthulhu himself has a cameo. I love the subject matter, but this is a poor film indie, one which doesn't hold together whichever way you look at it.

Well, if you can call it a film. It completely lacks a coherent narrative. It makes no sense. It's just disjointed writing and crude images. Paraphrasing a line from the film of course, but it fits. Example: My colleagues - what few are left - are gone. Also, very hard to hear/understand some of the main actress' dialogue. I think her English actually improved during the course of the film, but I wish I had subtitles available. Got to give some credit for Lovecraftian horror theme though.

The lead actress was just awful. Her lack of the English language was dominate and her lack of acting ability was very visual. The director should at least try to go to film school. The editing was horrible and ridiculous. This movie was like some little kids got together and said "hey I got a camera, let's make a movie". I take that back, kids would have done a better job.

I just know that my brain now hurts and I don't think my eyes will ever forgive me.

All I can think is "Oh Hai, Mark!" What starts out as a horribly, terribly acted movie soon turns into an embarassing mess of writing, acting, directing and unintentional butchering of the english language. But stick with it and you'll see some of the worst cinema you'll see in ages. It's worth it for the laughs! The main, terrible, actress (Nana) talks into a (web?) camera throughout the movie as a narrator of sorts. The camera is mounted above her forehead and she has to look up at it with her twisted smile, terrible acting, awful pronunciation and a psycho look in her eyes. It all seems intentionally comical, but -- its not. It's super serious and it's super super bad. The writing - oh wow - there are so many terrible quotes of cringe and nonsense, you'll feel like you're drunk trying to follow the dialogue. Just listen to it.. and it's really (unintentionally) funny-bad. Unlike tongue-in-cheek movies like the Sharknado series, this movie thinks its a seriously good flick, and it's hilarious to watch it try to pretend that it's an actual movie. It tries to be a found footage film in a lot of the scenes, but it often raises the question : "Who is filming this? Where did the camera to film that come from??" Its so poorly thought out, its awesome-bad. No it's not Tommy Wiseau bad, but it's pretty damn close. The main actress is worth it just to see how bad she is trying to be good. It's still worth a 1/10 - but if you watch it just to enjoy its worst-in-class acting and its worst-in-class dialogue, you certainly will get some laughs and some groans. Just don't think it's serious.. and you might want to stream it so you can move the slider to give yourself a bit of break from having to watch the whole thing.

Never ceases to amaze me that so much effort and money can be poured into a film for so little. I find it surprising also that Julia Roberts brother and Tom Sizemore are in this. Just goes to show they have no idea until the end of filming what the result will be, maybe they don't care. Best part of this film is the out takes at the end.