Fading of the Cries (2008) Reviews

• fun but forgettable film

  racemonster12011-04-16

  Fading of the Cries is inconsistent. It packs a punch, but only in certain parts, most noticeable the third act. That is the whole problem with this film from beginning to end. Its biggest weakness - the acting, hands down. Leads, newcomer Jordan Matthews and ER's Hallee Hirsh, who play Jacob and Sarah, both have a serious lack of any chemistry whatsoever and one tends to get quite annoyed at Jordan Matthews at times when he reads off dull monotonic lines with no expression, as if reading from a script on the spot. As an actor myself, I notice he tends to fall into numerous acting traps that many amateurs first do - namely not enough practice/experience. Actress Hallee Hirsh tends to overact all of her scenes with an overabundance of annoyance, maybe overcompensating off her lead who is giving her nothing to work with. I've read reviews stating similarities to both Twilight and The Crow. Here's my two cents: Say what you will about Twilight, there was strong chemistry there between Edward and Bella that you could feel. That's what that film did right and this ain't no Twilight. What Brandon Lee did correct about The Crow was giving his character a sense of pain and emotion. I get nothing from Jordan Matthews. Then again, he could be going for the stereotypical action actor without any acting talent in which case I would state to learn how to walk properly without doing the duck butt sticking out and you're there. Genre favorite Brad Dourif and even Mackenzie Rosman, on the other hand, managed to pull off decent performances. Brad plays the antagonist of the film with such precise clarity that one almost feels bad he has almost nobody to play with scenewise. It shows what happens when you compare someone of his caliber level with the likes of no-talents like Jordan Matthews who does an embarrassingly bad job in the film's final standoff . Mackenzie also holds her own as the bratty younger sister pulled into the nightmare. Some of the visuals are breathtakingly beautiful and some are not so great. The scenes deep rooted in reality feel almost like a TV movie of the week while some of the visual effects scenes feel like a major motion picture. The strongest consistency this film has is the pacing. It never tends to let you down and picks up pace quite quickly in the third act. Some of the scenes are very well directed while others are lacking. Since this was also his first movie, I might assume that Brian A. Metcalf might not fall into the same trappings again. I will state that the film had more of a story than I had originally expected and if only the acting had been better, the characters might had been more believable. I actually feel that writer/director Brian A. Metcalf might have had a little cult gem had he worked with stronger actors as he does have quite a unique and stylized vision, i.e. the sunrays that seem to overtake this film and constant movement of background bats and crows. His dialogue needed some polishing but again, had he worked with more talented actors, they might have been able to pull it off more convincingly. This was the case with Brad who by far had the most elaborate lines in the film and pulled them off with such ease. As director James Cameron says, choosing the right actor is by far one of the most important tasks in a film because once you have them, you're stuck with them. I would like to see how another film by Brian would turn out given a better budget, stronger cast and crew. But Brian is not off the hook so easily as some of the scenes felt there was a lack of coverage. The kitchen scene tends to show the most. Costuming was terrible and the costumer, Elizabeth Jett should be quite embarrassed about the poor job she did, showing her extreme lack of talent and vision. Same can be said for some of the creature makeup effects. Lighting on the other hand was very nicely tackled. There are so many independent films where you can't see a thing at night due to lack of experienced DPs or budget constraints. I could at least see every scene with a decent amount of detail in the dark and that is becoming a rarity these days with independents. I understand that dealing with the independent world, there are many challenges foreseen and unforeseen. As a person who works mainly with the independent film world, I get a lot of the problems that happen. I do feel many of these mistakes could have been avoided had proper planning been in place, again I revert back to the acting. All considering, for a low budget indie film, Fading of the Cries seems to be a strong step above other independents, namely the production values and locations. I would recommend this film only if you can get past the bad acting and have nothing better to do. Overall it turns out to be a fun but not overly memorable film. Final rating: (1 to 10) Story - 7 Execution - 4 (largely due to poor acting) Acting - 2 1/2 (not a 1 only because actor Brad Dourif does remarkable) Directing - 6 Production Value - 7 (largely due to well lit scenes at night and some decent fx) Costuming - 3 Makeup - 4 Sound Design - 3 1/2 Music - 7 I give it 5 1/2 out of 10 stars, only with the consideration it was an independent film.

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• entertaining low budget indie horror film

  dchepret2011-04-11

  So I've read all the reviews, watched the film and now have come up with my own conclusions. I guess after reading so many comments I felt inclined to put in my own thoughts. My friends and I went in simply expecting an entertaining low-budget zombie horror movie and we got an entertaining low-budget horror movie. The film starts off with Sarah finding some antique in her attic along with booze, leaving and finding her friend. Within a matter of minutes they are attacked by zombies when Jacob comes in to save the day out of practically nowhere, which is later described in the film. Soon they are running around on streets and into the fields hacking and chopping up zombies and dismembering them. Okay, we had fun watching that and were always excited to see them getting sliced by the blade. Soon they run into an abandoned shelter or something where they are attacked by some wraith or something that reminded me of the glass creature from Conan the Destroyer. The creature jumps out the window and the two are forced to then go down into some huge tunnel or cave. And it goes on and on and on with different obstacles like a bridge and cornfields (which was my personal favorite scene). Some stuff didn't make sense and you have to allow yourself to just relax and be entertained and go with it. The FX: I've heard a lot of positives and negatives comments. Personally for me, I was lukewarm - nothing new that wowed me but nothing that felt overly fake looking to me. Despite reading some comments, this was nothing near as bad as a sci-fi channel movie and many of the other typical horror films. In addition, the film did not feel one bit claustrophobic. I hate indies where the locations are just one room or two. This was everywhere and it was quite enjoyable. Some of the scenery was really pretty and epic looking like the wideshot of the cornfield and the bridge so they got some really nice shots from whatever locations used. I knew I recognized the bad guy from somewhere but it was not until someone told me he was chucky that it stuck together. But he was fantastic. The rest of the acting was okay, but no worse (and no better) then any other horror film. That's the other thing, I wouldn't even call it horror. I don't know why they promote it as that as its simply not true, well except maybe towards the end. But its much more like an action quest film of sorts with the baddies being zombies instead of say, whatever. What gives it the most points for me are originality. I haven't quite seen anything like this before. What hurt it was lack of budget. It was apparent they didn't have much to work with. But We all had fun with it and never felt bored. The last part of the film is pretty intense and we all got into that. So I thought it was fun, but I wasn't expecting Schindler's List either. Its a frickin' zombie film for crying out loud. Of course its not gonna win any Oscars. I love that genre and support by all means. That being said, there were still some issues. Some of the scenes, like the beginning with Sarah and mom fighting felt fake. They could have just cut that whole scene out. I didn't care so much about how the zombies were raised, they could have cut that shorter and just focused more on slicing and dicing zombies. I pretty much got what I expected from the trailer and that says a lot since I won't go on about the misleading Sucker Punch and we did start to watch Monsters and got bored with that one. We saw a zombies being hacked to death indie film filled with lotsa action and lousy acting and loved it.

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• I got into this film

  jnemetz1002011-04-30

  My and my girlfriends just watched this and we agreed this is the first zombie film we actually liked. We almost didn't watch it had it not been for the previews showing more then just zombies eating people. But the film started out kinda weird and we only started paying attention to it after the two teens make a run into the fields. But by towards the end of the film, we were all hooked with eyes fixed to it. There was like no actors any of us knew but it didn't bother us as the baddie was really cool and we all liked the Gothic style of the film. We got a little confused with the flashback scenes and didn't understand why the dude in the past was suddenly here now but then again, we weren't 100% focused. Anyways, afterward, I watched it again alone and it made a lot more sense the second time around. I love all the variety of locations the film takes place in, especially the cornfields. But there were some really cool parts that grabbed us and almost felt like an anime like walking against a huge moon and the attic scene where all these light-rays come in. The zombies looked really cool and original. And we totally loved wrap-head chick who touches things and weird black veins seem to sprout out. She should have been the main bad guy in our opinions just because of the coolness factor. The lead guy looked pretty cool with the whole dark mysterious thing and the sword as weapon of choice. Some scenes actually reminded me of my summers, hanging out in the fields and under bridges. Just the feeling has a very innocent quality to it. My only gripes are the ending tends to get all bloody and there was one scene we just couldn't watch when girlfriend beats her mom's head in. Also I wish there had been a little bit more of a romance between the two teens and less scenes of the flashback with the artist guy.

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• halfway decent indie film but

  jpultwiner2011-04-10

  I watched this film a couple hours ago and decided to come back and write a review on it. I have to say after thinking about it, it wasn't half bad. Let me preface this by saying also, I just finished the indie film, Monsters and was really disappointed. I mean it felt like a major disappointment because of the fact that there weren't any monsters in the film until the very ending. But this had tons of zombies everywhere. I really felt the town was overrun with them and I got the sense of dread. I am also somewhat lenient towards it because its an independent film with probably not much of a budget. For what it was, I was impressed. Writer/Director Brian A. Metcalf managed to give a little bit of originality to the tired zombie genre even though it seems vastly overplayed nowadays but still stayed true to the genre with the "you get bitten you turn into one" phase. I love that this was vastly different than Twilight despite hearing comments that it was nothing more then one. This went places other films wouldn't such as hacking the mom in the head with the firepoker. But it didn't show blood just for the sake of showing it. Nor did random characters just pop up to then be hacked to death. Also, Brad Dourif was a super high point for me, that man can act! And this was one of his best looking characters in a long time. Okay the rest of the cast wasn't great in acting. I also highly wonder why they went with the girl as a choice. She ended up being really annoying, whiny and with a high pitch voice. But Jaocb didn't bother me so much as he was playing the action role with the sword. The lady who played Maggie did quite well because I believed her as both a young mom and older mom in the present. Dialogue could have been better at times. I did feel the effects weren't bad and a step better than SyFy type effects as nothing was too cheesy to me. I absolutely loved the malyne character and the veins that get created whenever she touches something and there were some really pretty skies in the film. Also the sheer amount of fx in this movie were mindblowing as it seemed filled with them. But there was a huge discrepancy between these epic scenes underground to these common scenes in mom's house. The pace quickly picks up in the last (minus the typical damsel in distress situation) and it gets really interesting. I understand what Brian was trying to achieve but he seemed to lack the proper budget to pull it off on such a grand scale. Overall a very entertaining indie flick and a step above Syfy level but not a 300.

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• Wow, do not waste your time

  echo8342011-05-28

  An Oscar should be given ... to whoever can sit through this movie. Seriously, some of the worst acting I have ever seen. I do not know how this movie could have been worse, the sound and scene editing was off and the story was 1) not backed up, 2) ruined by the distractingly bad acting, and 3) made worse by the thought of attempting to make you care about the actors. I've seen over 1300 movies, this one makes me wish I was blind. Do not even attempt to give it a chance. I'll put it plainly, if you were going to make a drinking game out of the amount of "OMG this is horrible" moments ... you would be wasted at the 20 minute mark.

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