User reviews

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?'.

Do not watch this one its so bad... Octane got me hooked on the first minute and then... just lost it. Worst movie top something for sure! Mischa should not be on this one! She's too good for this sh*t. I don't get whats real and whats not. I don't see the point. Its stupid and with a stupid ending also. Lost time watching it. Movies like this shouldn't be allowed to come out and make people lose time by getting them. "Vampire Clan" is the worst movie ever top 1 but this one is close to suck that much. Maybe the whole movie is in another dimension and they just forget to tell us, the pills that Nat's mother takes are the reason for the whole thing... ahah, nothing makes sense.

Okay. So I stumbled upon "Octane" at around 2am on cable television. The cast kept my interest. The Score is by ORBITAL, that kept my interest. Not knowing or have ever heard of this movie kept my interest.

Watch this movie and keep thinking to yourself that everyone in this movie is in the Matrix movie. Except none of these actors/characters have learned or spent anytime uploading/downloading kung fu.

Overall. Octane, bizarre, eye=candy, weak conclusions,absurdly good meta moments, excellent score, ridiculously incongruent continuity.

A good winding down movie for 4:01am

The involvement of Johnathan Rhys-Meyers and Madeline Stowe made me interested in seeing Pulse/Octane. For the first part of the movie I was rewarded with cool photography, a nightmarish tone and the increasingly complex portrayal of a messed up mother-daughter dynamic. I began to get excited about what was to come as I was reminded of great classics like The Hunger, Aliens or Near Dark. Unfortunately, this potential never came to fruition.

What begins as an examination of a mother's will to protect her petulant daughter from herself soon decays into just another "B" horror movie full of clichés and buffoonish action. Shifting the perspective from Stow's character to the daughter's (Micha Barton) removes all weight and tension from the story since Barton's character is as fluffy and foolish as any MTV V-Jay. Why should we root for the mother when the heroin-chic daughter would so obviously be more happy partying with Bijou Phillips' vacuous hitchhiker?

Jonathan Rhys Meyers uses his trademark sensuality to good effect here, but his character, "The Father," is given such short-shrift that he never becomes more than a caricature. Still, if he is some kind of symbol for wanton lasciviousness, it looks so good on him one roots for Barton to accept his advances and ditch her mother's increasingly silly attempts to save her.

Movies like this are really irritating because of what they could have been with a bit more vision on the part of the writer and director. I'm sure Stowe and Rhys-Meyers saw the potential in the script and were then disappointed. For me, Pulse/Octane is one that got away...

Could it my valves rattling from cheap gasoline or is that me banging my head upon the wall for having allowed myself to watch "Octane"? This movie appears to be a good example of what happens when someone has a vague idea of a film story but doesn't bother to hash it out on paper before turning the cameras on. Not surprisingly, about half way through the film, the story gets lost somewhere on the interstate between stupid and boring. I wish I could give you an idea of what this film is really about but I'm as clueless as director Marcus Adams and writer Stephen Volk. Take some advice guys, get a tune up and consider going back to film school. Only this time, try attending class once in a while.

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.

Ah, the adorable Mrs.Stowe… I sure miss the late 80's/early 90's, back when she was an elite member of the chosen few actresses club (alongside Linda Fiorentino, Lara Flynn Boyle and Sherilyn Fenn) who's every new film became instant priority-viewing on my movies' list. I wonder if she herself regrets the glorious days of "China Moon", "Blink" and "Unlawful Entry" are gone forever, especially now that she has to appear in below par and allegedly 'hip' new horror movies like this dreadfully irritating "Octane". This film is, briefly put, a big fat steaming & smelly pile of utter garbage. The story makes no sense whatsoever, the terribly slow built up atmosphere of mysteriousness leads absolutely nowhere, the "villainous" characters are pathetic & all but menacing and there's a seriously frustrating shortage of gore and sleaze. The ravishing Madeleine Stowe plays the uptight mother of an equally ravishing teenage girl (Mischa Barton) and the two are on a long and nightly homeward car journey. Things heat up when mommy forbids her daughter to go to a music concert and, bang, the girl promptly runs off with a bunch of rebellious teenagers in a giant truck. The fact she wanders off with complete strangers is already quite implausible, especially in this day and age, but the script even gets sillier when the strangers turn out to be members of some sort of bizarre cult. I think it's even hinted that they are a modern type of vampires, but that's never really confirmed. And then it even gets more retarded when literally everyone on the highway appears to be involved in this fiendish organization, including a female police officer and random motor home people in a restaurant. Stephen Volk's screenplay is truly unimaginative, borrowing even elements from 70's chillers like "Race With The Devil", Marcus Adams' direction is totally uninspired (not at all stylish, like some reviews I encountered dare to proclaim) and you know you're in trouble when someone without charisma like Jonathan Rhys Meyers is supposed to play an evil personified type of character referred to as The Father. Give me a break. "Octane" is a pretentious, pitiable and miserable excuse for a thriller, and if you have idea what good film-making is about you'll stay the hell away from it.

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")

Totally sucked. Boring. Awful. Ridiculous. Stupid. Exercise in wasting celluloid. Waste of Jonathan Rhys Meyers. Barton - always horrible. Barton - talentless. Stowe - surprised she'd do such tripe. Tedius. Wanting of plot. Wanting of a story. Wanting of good writing. Wanting of good direction. Wanting of art direction. Wanting of anything good. WANTING. WANTING. Totally sucked. Boring. Awful. Ridiculous. Stupid. Exercise in wasting celluloid. Waste of Jonathan Rhys Meyers. Barton - always horrible. Barton - talentless. Stowe - surprised she'd do such tripe. Tedius. Wanting of plot. Wanting of a story. Wanting of good writing. Wanting of good direction. Wanting of art direction. Wanting of anything good. WANTING. WANTING.

As you have probably gathered from the other reviews, this film badly needed a script doctor. If you watch films only to watch "stories," then move on. If, however, you appreciate stylish, dreamlike imagery and provocative dramatic situations, then this film does have something to offer. "Pulse" has been running on Showtime (under the title "Octane") and I have watched long sections of it several times. As scenes and sequences, many of these sections are quite compelling. I would like to see what this film's screenwriter(s) produce in five or ten years and I would like to see this director work with more coherent material.

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.

It took 3 attempts to finish this turkey, and I only did it because my husband was interested. Sad to say, all of our guesses as to what was happening were better than the actual plot. Who makes these things and why? Whatever they paid the actors could not possibly have been enough to compensate them for the damage it must have done to their future careers. I have been a lifelong fan of the Horror?Thriller genre, and this is a reasonably unique picture. I would rather see a trite plot that makes some kind of sense than whatever the heck this was. Watch this puppy at your own risk. There is no redemption for a movie that drags on without any real hint of what's going on and at the end there is no satisfaction.

My humble opinion...this movie is the among the worst I've ever seen. I had to come here and read reviews to find out "Octane" was a horror! (as it didn't thrill me at all).Otherwise I couldn't even say what kind of movie was it. I am still confused and don't understand what was it about, who were all those people in the movie,what was the message of it,why did they do this and that, where were they going and questions can go on.... All I understood is that the movie tries to get into our minds and present all those guys as "evil" or may be "faces" of devil. Thanks God I got the message! If you haven't seen this movie yet, then you lost nothing. And...if they are ever going to give Oscars for bad films...then this one should get it!

A terrible movie.

I ordered this movie through Blockbuster.com. I found it by doing a search for Raves. The first time this movie was delivered it was cracked so I asked to have it delivered again. WHAT A MISTAKE AND WASTE OF TIME!

After the first few chapters I was asking myself what the hell is going on here? I found myself saying this movie sucks. There is no plot! If there was I didn't see it. So I waited it out and hoped it would get better. It didn't! There are no raves in this movie. There are few catchy techno songs but that is it. Jonathan Rhys-Meyers is hot, but the father? I think not.

Bottom Line: Don't waste your time.

What Happened? Who is that blood drinking boy? What happening the girls? Why are they killing people? There is not any answer for these questions I have never watched any movie like this before and I never want to too. what the is going on there? It was really worst movie I have ever seen . So don't watch it it is just a waste of time nothing more.. In the end there is a Gillette on the front mirror of the car :) I think director making movie more interesting and mystique but I think he is again making bullshit :) I didn't like any scene of these film.Think the worst things come together and this movie is created ... but i have to say that girl was beautiful and she is so cute I think she made her life mistake to act in this movie she can't be famous or make a career anymore :) with this film I'm sorry for her name...god Bellini; Verine sizing Kaufman malaria :)

Before I rented the DVD, I came here to check out some of the reviews ... and they weren't that good. But I trusted my gut instinct and rented it anyway. So now that I've seen Octane, I have to say it's far better then most people say, but I also agree that this movie could've benefited from some kind of explainable narrative. Only people like David Lynch can pull off extremely unlikely plot lines and weird twists that don't make sense, without the audience questioning them. In case of Octane your suspension of disbelief only goes so far, that's the only negative thing I can say about this film. the acting is good, visually the movie is worth watching (some fresh ideas and nice shots), the soundtrack is terrific and the overall mood is just the way I like it. It is a flawed exercise in style, but definitely deserves more credit than it's getting so far.

This is without no doubt the worst movie I ever seen...For the life of me I can't understand why I could watch it entirely but maybe I was in an very very good mood....The plot is: A mother tries to save her daughter from a road killer cult....and that's about all you can make out of this movie...the rest is so stupid you have nothing to describe anymore....Watching it reminded me of the Van Helsing screenplay which I thought at that time was the worst of all...Well prepare to be happy: the screenplay for Octane beats it by far in stupidity and nonsense...The only thing that could keep you busy thinking at this movie is: Who was drunk/out of his mind ? the writer who produced this crap or the producer who approved it and payed the bills?

Damn! I still can't get over it. I expected absolutely nothing from "Octane" and such a nice surprise it turned out to be! Madeleine Stowe plays a stressy mother whose teenage daughter disappears together with a hitch-hiking girl they picked up earlier. The police doesn't believe her (actually, they are misled), and she goes off in search for her daughter, discovering several disturbing things along the way. Creepy and suspenseful flick, with a high 'what the hell is going on here'-feeling. Don't expect everything nicely explained to you, but a lot of the clues are there. A lot of people didn't seem to like this one (often because they were left with too much questions and thought the film to be messy in structure). It really is a shame, because this is a good & intriguing modern-day horror/thriller and highly under-rated, if you ask me. Not everything is spelled out for you, and that's the way I sometimes like 'em. At least for this one it worked for me. Not all events are plausible, I admit, but hey, it's a horror movie. Not a gory one, but near the end there is quite a bit of bloodshed. Especially some bloody painful things are being done to people's tongues. Great musical score by Orbital too.

Although I saw this film on television and sat through it in its entirety, I feel this is a vampire story of limited worth. If you like vampire movies and decide to see the film, be forewarned that it has many problems that will keep your interest wavering. First, there is the mediocre acting delivered by the mother and daughter protagonists, who never rise above clichés. The two are dysfunctional in a tawdry, uninspired way (No, you can't go to that rock concert. Why not????? Because I'm your mother and I said so!!! I hate you!!) that left me hoping their SUV would careen off a cliff in a dramatic Thelma and Louise finale, and after I was only 10 minutes into the film. Yet, inexplicably, they are given far too much screen time to allow for the development of scenes that might otherwise have proved diverting or gripping. Second, the screenplay lacks verve or ingenuity. It doesn't help matters that the screenwriter was sufficiently enamored of his script to have characters repeating lines as if they were memorable and profound truths. Far more problematic is the lack of cohesion and the absence of any thematic development in his script. He fails to develop an interesting and compelling rapport between mother and daughter (as mentioned above), a terrible blunder that weakened the story. Additionally, there are enormous holes in this story that will have discerning viewers feeling impatient and cheated. We are never given enough information to understand how the vampires work nor what their motivations might have been in choosing our boring little Nat as their next victim. Nor do we understand how it is that the head vampire, from all appearances the kind of high-school degenerate who might turn tricks for drugs, knows that the amphetamine-popping mother attempted a self-induced abortion years ago to rid herself of her surprisingly tenacious, now fully-grown and leggy, but limp, daughter. Third, there is the problem of films set in America but filmed elsewhere that lack a truly American film (think Eyes Wide Shut.) Everything about this film looks as if it were filmed on a desolate tundra plain. The truck-stops look decidedly foreign, the stretch of roadways don't look like American freeways and, worse yet, the extras don't look American. Finally, there is an irritating film score that had me feeling nauseated.