Th'dread Rattlin'

source: Th'dread Rattlin'

I saw the movie on Amazon Prime and thought "Sure, why not." After wading through the whole mess I can say, I should have stayed with the "not". The plot itself doesn't sound earth shattering, but does sound like it could provide an interesting little story with the right direction. When I saw that it was a director's "proof of concept" I started getting worried. When I saw that the director was also a main actor /and/ the writer I got more worried. Unsurprisingly he writes himself as a priest who used to be a "soldier and a mercenary" who managed to single handedly kill nine men who tried to rape his wife. We find this out in a completely unnecessary scene where he is praying to God for forgiveness for all the killing he's done. I'm not kidding. That combined with a bunch of confusing scenes that I assume he thought were "artsy" and a plot that seems to be everywhere, makes for an unsatisfying viewing. If the director/actor/writer had actually kept to the synopsis of the film and kept himself and more of his vanity out of it, it probably could have made for an ok indie movie.

A lot of scenes of nothing. A tree here. A road there. Gazing at people basically doing nothing in the scene. Music playing (composition/songs) as if they're trying to film a music video of some kind. The plot's mundane: people investigate noise in the woods. So ominous. /sarcasm It either doesn't go anywhere or just takes way too long to get there. Or, and the most likely: you don't really care if it's going anywhere because you become bored less than ten minutes in. Is there some nefarious noise in the woods? How could anyone hear (meaning viewers) with the loud soundtrack trying to set whatever ominous mood it wanted to set? The acting isn't terrible but what they're saying means basically nothing, and there's a lot of repetition by different characters. The editing is awful, the direction is almost as bad but actually not the worst aspect. The different genre of composition/songs used basically ended everything for me. It was consistent nor inconsistent in showing why, and it was much louder than the dialogue that it actually, at some points, hurt my ears. The most boring thing about this film is watching the characters watch things. There's a lot of that in this. One character says, "I'm bored now." and I agreed and that was the end of the film for me. 38 minutes in. Anyone else who got past: my respect to you. (technically, I made it to the priest smoking and drinking 41 minutes in...)

The title gives away that TH'DREAD RATTLIN' is an undistinguished and somewhat unwieldy addition to the world of indie releasing. A would-be horror film shot in a series of attractive real-world locations, it follows a group of students as they investigate a mysterious, possibly paranormal, rattling sound coming from the local wood. It's quite philosophical in tone and higher browed than most indies, but perhaps too realistic for its own good because it is quite mundane.

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Th'dread Rattlin'