Although, The Hamiltons is, and that's a piece of tripe.
One of the 8 Films to Die For, Unrest is like the others, semi-obscure indie directors and writers, actors that no one's ever hear of, but, fairly decent movies. They were likely submissions that weren't good enough to stand on their own, but, package them together and market them as they did, and you've got something people will actually seek out. It clearly worked on me.
Of course, I'm a horror movie fan, be they good or bad
Now, Unrest fits in nicely. It's not terrible, but it's clear why this one wasn't marketed on it's own. The film is written and directed by no one, and stars some people I'm sure I've seen in the background of various network shows. With that said, the acting level in the film is not going to turn heads, though I've certainly seen worse. But, I won't be expecting any of these people in any other major titles soon.
The story is actually pretty straight forward, a creepy American woman dies abroad, her body is brought back to the states as a medical cadaver. The story then revolves around an young, attractive med student who doesn't feel comfortable slicing into it with her peers. Of course, this is for good reason, as the corpse is apparently carrying the enraged spirits of several Aztec or Mayan dead she'd found in some sort of mass grave. Actually, that whole part of the story is pretty convoluted.
The brunt of the movie flows like a 'suspense horror', but it seems the writer was determined to add a flair of the 'spiritual' and what have you, as many of the characters all seem to bring to topic up. The dialog is also pretty poor in more than a few spots, one memorable quote would be, "My cadaver wants something from me and I better figure it out before she kills me too." Another great line, from one medical student to another while suturing a human bite wound, "Don't you need a tetanus shot or something?"
There's also some major inconsistencies as well. First, the main heroine of the film is an atheist, but she seems to be wearing a cross necklace throughout the movie, it even falls out while she's talking about being an atheist. Another is the odd bit is where, the med student, completely creeped out, sets aside her fear for some frisky sex, which wouldn't be so bad, but they'd just been 'fighting the evil' for a while, and then suddenly flipped it to the sex. Oh, and there's not one, but two scenes where the attractive main character takes off her top to be in her bra so that she can reach into a large vat of formaldehyde, as if we didn't get enough the first time, we get to see it again.
The shooting is solid, and while it's clearly not researched well, it was supposedly shot in a real morgue, and according to the trailer, they actually used real bodies. All things considered, it seems like a great first film for those involved. The ending did seem to leave things open for a sequel, although I don't imagine we'll see one.
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