ATM (2012)
THE SCOOP
Director: David Brooks
Cast: Alice Eve, Josh Peck, Brian Geraghty
Plot: On a late night visit to an ATM, three co-workers end up in a desperate fight for their lives when they become trapped by an unknown man.
Genre: Horror / Thriller
Awards: -
Runtime: 90min
Rating: PG13 for violence and terror.
IN RETROSPECT (Spoilers: NO)
With a movie title like ATM, half of the battle is already lost to win the minds of moviegoers who probably know that this horror-thriller flick is gonna suck their hard-earned wad big time.
It's a high-concept
movie - a trio of colleagues visit an
ATM in a secluded parking lot in the dead of the night only to find themselves
trapped by an unknown man - but suffers the ignominy of having possibly one of
the worst-written screenplays of the year.
Now, this is
extremely surprising because the writer Chris Sparling previously penned Buried (2010), a suspenseful film
starring Ryan Reynolds as a man who wakes up to find himself trapped in a
makeshift coffin buried deep in the ground. While Buried was a Hitchcockian exercise on building dread, ATM is a dreadful exercise on
building... what?
No one knows. No
one cares.
It's a B-movie
masquerading as a serious horror-thriller. It tries too hard to impress when
something more campy would have given the film a lift. A lift is what's needed
because the movie is so lacklustre. The direction by David Brooks may be
textbook stuff, but to his credit, he tries to liven up his movie with a couple
of deftly-executed 'cat and mouse' set pieces.
Still, the film's
plot holes are gaping wide - you have to see to believe them, but beware, they
may swallow you whole. Some of the characters' actions and reactions to their
situation also remain implausible, occasionally borne out of human stupidity
more than anything else. Worse, the villain is one-dimensional, and even by the
end of the picture, we aren't sure what he's up to.
No one knows. No
one cares.
Verdict: A contender for one of the worst screenplays of the year, this is one ATM that not only doesn't dispense your money, but sucks it.
GRADE: F (3.5/10 or 1.5 stars)
Tweet
Follow @Filmnomenon
Click here to go back to Central Station.
Comments
How many hundreds of thousands of dollars or hundreds of hours of acting by takes and re_takes have you partaken in? How many countless hours have you sat in the casting trailers waiting for one scene to be filmed? How many times have you been called to location just to sit and wait for hours on end and have nothign happen iwth your character and have to wait for another day to shoot your scene?
Just wondering where you get off trying to tell the professionals how to do their job when you don't know how to do it in the first place?
Two points from me and some statistics:
1. I am a reviewer, not a filmmaker. If I were to rate every film based on effort alone, they would get a 10 from me. But then I will cease to become a reviewer. I write for moviegoing readers. They want to know if a movie is good or bad. In my opinion, ATM is bad. If I say it is good, I will be deceiving myself and my readers. Then I would not be an ethical reviewer.
2. I always believe that professional filmmakers have an obligation to make good films, or at least something that is worth catching, considering the time, effort, and money that are put in. If a film turns out bad, something must have gone wrong. In ATM's case, the poor screenplay is the major cause of the film's downfall. I have friends who are filmmakers, and I understand that making a film is tough. If a film turns out bad, it is up to the professional filmmakers to decide whether to discontinue filmmaking (because they are not cut out for it), or to take it as a learning experience and make a better follow-up film.
Some statistics for ATM:
IMDB: 4.7/10
Metacritic: 34/100
Rotten Tomatoes: 10% (Avg. rating 4/10)
Movieline: 4/10
Indiewire: C-
A.V Club: D
MovieXclusive: 2.5/5 stars