Review of Barricade (2012) by Arianna J — 14 Oct 2015

I don't think I'd have to much to say about this film cause this film doesn't really do much or tell an interesting story. First of all, like there's literally no reason for anything in the film, like the film doesn't justify its own events.

Like they're stuck in this cabin during a snowstorm and Terrance starts to lose his mind as he keeps seeing increasingly strange things, feeling like there are forces around him that are hellbent on harming his children.

I'm gonna spoil the film, I don't really care, so ***SPOILERS***, everything that happened was all a construct of Terrance's mind. He imagined pretty much everything and there were certain things that disappeared, which is then revealed to have been Terrance all along, without him having any recollection of what he did afterwards.

They try to justify it by showing him drinking alcohol to down some pills, but it honestly feels like a lazy reason to justify all of this. Like they just couldn't be bothered to come up with anything better.

I'm not a person who drinks or takes any pills, so I don't honestly know the effect the combination of the two might have. It may very well be a realistic portrayal, I doubt it, but it's for the sake of argument, and it still wouldn't feel like a justifiable explanation for Terrance's behavior throughout the film.

The film just feels like a serious of lazily put together scenes without any real tension or suspense to them. Building suspense isn't just using the score in order to get the desired reaction, you have to structure the film in such a way where the score only enhances the tension you've naturally built up throughout the film.

This doesn't do that, obviously. Another thing that doesn't help is that, honestly, Eric McCormack isn't that good of an actor. Maybe it's just the fact that he simply doesn't care anymore and is just doing it for a paycheck at this point.

But I just found him to be terrible here, like he didn't take any of this seriously. I think he's, obviously, a better comedic actor than he is a dramatic actor, but he just didn't give a shit here and it was obvious to see.

This is a really bad movie on pretty much every front. Bad acting, bad cinematography, even worse acting and lazily structured film that doesn't do a good job at giving you a valid reason for why this is happening.

Just a failure on all grounds.