★ 7 / 10
The Calm Beyond" crafts a compelling but ultimately
MovieGuys
"the Calm Beyond" crafts a compelling but ultimately underwhelming tale, of survival and personal growth. The film takes place in the limited setting, of a…
"the Calm Beyond" crafts a compelling but ultimately underwhelming tale, of survival and personal growth.
The film takes place in the limited setting, of a largely flooded Hong Kong apartment block, after a apocalyptic tsunami, that wipes away life as the key character knew it.
The character, a young woman lives her life in survival mode. She cautiously making her foot print on the world, as small as possible, to avoid detection by marauders, who infrequently raid the apartments by boat.
She lives with remembrances of her past life. Her hopes but more often than not, her regrets. We get to see this in flash backs.
It is in every sense a half life until a young girl arrives, bringing new hope for a more open, brave and ultimately, fulfilling future.
Its a worthwhile story, its intelligently written, reflecting the kinds of real world struggles people in this predicament might face and how they would reasonably, respond.
Where it falls down somewhat is the relationship between the two primary characters, always feels emotionally shallow. The deep bond we hope to see in the face of adversity, never really arrives.
The results a competent film, with quality performances and narrative but one that feels, dissatisfying.
In summary, a lot to like here that would have been that much better again, with more of an emphasis, on developing the emotional ties, between the woman and the child.Nonetheless, certainly worth a look.
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★ 6 / 10
Even at only 95 min long, all the filler and little substance dragged out this film to feel much longer.
Top_Dawg_Critic
It's not too bad for a first full length feature film for short film, music video and TV commercials filmmaker Joshua Wong, but his lack of experience to…
It's not too bad for a first full length feature film for short film, music video and TV commercials filmmaker Joshua Wong, but his lack of experience to create proper content to fill in a longer runtime is evident.
While the film's lead characters are sweet and entertaining, it isn't bringing anything new enough to the table. It feels somewhat confused about the story it's trying to tell, for the most part it's a sentimental story of family but then randomly throws in moments of tension and violence. The two don't go together smoothly here, and what you end up with is a relatively slow paced drama, set in a harsh world we know little about, with an emotional story which never digs very deep, and some cliched, minimally appearing bad guys.
With proper editing, this film should've had at least 30 mins cut out, and add more tense scenes, and trim down the mainly irrelevant long dragged out sappy scenes, and have more of the amazing dramatics we got in the last 10 mins of the film. The flashbacks were also poorly filmed, convoluted and all over the place.
The cinematography and score were decent, and the performances spot-on. It's a good attempt, with a failed result. All things considered, this film is not deserving of one's and twos, and clearly not worthy of anything above a seven, so it's a generous 6/10 from me.
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•••
Very good action/fantasy 7/10