...Whichever you believe it is, the light radiating from my TV while watching this movie was extremely SSSSLLLLLLOOOOOOOOW moving! ...Or maybe it was just the movie itself... Though it was not a terrible movie.
I had time to go and browse Websites to review what I remember about the electromagnetic spectrum trying to guess which wavelengths were being used in this story. And while I did that and checked e-mail, I didn't feel that I had missed anything at all in the film. There were probably about 14 minutes of critical scenes and the rest is pretty much build-up, so feel free to catch up on bills or do your taxes throughout this one.
For some reason, I enjoyed the acting of some of the characters. The two younger male leads seemed to be very genuine, and I don't think the factory foreman even knew he was in a movie and may have been operating a real machine shop the whole time. In fact, there was a very real feeling to the representation of an entire small community revolving around the work life at a single large industrial/factory work type employer. Maybe this is why whoever perpetrated this experiment chose this town--other than whatever the factory produced, no one in America would miss anyone or anything in this town if it disappeared one day.
Many parts of this film reminded me of the almost farcical, terrible attempt at bat zombie-ism "The Roost". In fact, they could have been filmed on the same location. Though in contrast to the truly terrible "The Roost", this film had a lot better cinematic, and pseudo-scientific value. Probably the scariest element of the film overall was the relationship between the young child (who even though the weather was cold, did not seem to go to school) and his single mother *shudder*.
Overall, I think they could have ramped up the zombie-factor of the film. Though there isn't really any analog to traditional zombie genre concepts, this movie could have gone that way. I mean, everybody loves a good zombie film, right? I don't think I'd want to ever watch it again, but some of the actors (or maybe it was just the characters) were nice enough that it wouldn't be terrible (or unbelievable) meeting them in Rural Indiana. If anything, this film might urge you to evaluate your life, and the value and meaning of life itself--because it's obviously NOT meant for us to work 1st, 2nd, and 3rd shifts day in and day out with NO hope of a better waking life.
