Review of Man Vs. (2015) by Jesse O — 20 May 2017

You know, I've never really been the outdoorsy type. It might be hereditary, since my mother and aunt, both of whom raised me, never really seemed to enjoy it. Not to say that I don't get the appeal, like, for example, if I had a little cabin in the woods near the lake then that would be just perfect to me.

But the idea of spending days camping out in a tent, in the middle of nowhere, with no civilization near me does not sound appealing. I mean I could do it if I went with a group of friends, because at least I'd be with people I like being around.

But as far as me, by my lonesome, I would never willingly put myself through that. I think that's part of why survivalist shows like Man vs Wild or Naked and Afraid have ended up becoming popular.

I believe a lot of people don't have the guts to go through it themselves, like put themselves up against nature and the elements, so they live vicariously through these shows without actually having to face any dangers.

And it's not like Bear Grylls himself was unaided while he filmed his show, but I think people can suspend their disbelief to buy into whatever goods Bear is selling. Survivalist shows, obviously, are the biggest inspiration to this film and, honestly, I really do like the concept of a survivalist horror movie.

Granted, almost every horror movie in existence is about the survival of the characters, but there's a neat little twist to that concept when your main character is someone who actually uses survival tactics in his own show.

It's not like it's a great concept, but I do like it. I've seen many of these ghost hunter horror flicks and this is a twist on that same concept, minus the exception that, obviously, Doug (the lead character) isn't hunting ghosts.

And the thing in this movie isn't a ghost. But I digress, what did I think about this movie? Honestly, I cannot say that it was a good movie. The film starts out slow, as it needed to be, it can't really dive into deep waters right out of the gate.

I mean they could, but it would be an ineffectively told story. Doug is out in the wild, where he plans to survive for five days. Simple enough. He starts filming his show, getting shelter ready, setting traps for game.

Things slowly start to go down south as strange things start occurring. It starts out simple, he starts hearing noises while he's alone, like an explosion, his game is taken down and stolen, as he elevated it using rope to keep other animals away.

He sees that everything he has done on camera is recreated almost perfectly by this person or thing that's in the woods with him. Cameras that he set up to catch the 'thing' on camera are pointed down while he's sleeping.

This, naturally, sets off all kinds of paranoia in Doug, initially believing that it's his crew (who're on the other side of the lake camping safely) playing a prank on him. Once things keep happening, he realizes that it's not his crew.

Things keep escalating until Doug reaches a point that he's just had enough and he's gonna leave and, hopefully, they can edit the thing together to make it look like he was there for five days.

Another thing, as all of this happens he still keeps filming his show like a real pro, just had to point that out. I liked that aspect for some reason or another. I just like the idea that, no matter how bad things get, he still keeps trying to make his show, even though he's clearly disturbed by what's going on.

It's a small detail, but I liked it. But I digress, it eventually comes to be known that the thing that Doug has been fearing is stalking him is, in fact, an alien. This is when the movie lost me.

Well, not this moment specifically, but things go downhill after this. The film spent so much time building this up and to see that the alien looked so fucking cheap, like really cheap, dulled some of the impact the reveal.

I hate to be that guy, but the effects are important and if you can't afford a decent CGi team, then just show bits and pieces of it, don't show all of it for more than five seconds at a time, which they did here.

Look at the example Alien set, where Ridley Scott refused to give you a look at the xenomorph for more than seconds at a time. That helped add to the suspense to the audience, since they were able to make up their own terrifying image in their mind.

Granted, this movie isn't Alien and it'll never be even compared to it, but you can still learn from the greats. But, even with the bad alien CG, I didn't think the movie was outright awful.

It was actually pretty decent. That is, of course, until the ending/twist. One of the things that I liked about this movie was the scale, it was relatively small. This was a self-contained incident and I think that would have given the movie's events more heft.

But let's go on, Doug finds his way to the house of their guide. While there, he sees an emergency broadcast that says that, in fact, this wasn't just an isolated incident. This is a worldwide-scale attack, as it has affected cities like Dubai.

The entire world, it seems, has been destroyed. Well, not destroyed the aliens pretty much wiped the major cities of the world out. Honestly, I found this to be a little stupid and needlessly ambitious.

When you start hearing things like worldwide-scale attacks, it sort of makes what you've been watching, really, meaningless. It's not a one-of-a-kind situation, since I'm sure billions of other people have had it just as bad if not worse than Doug.

And I don't really even understand the point of the twist, it's not like there's gonna be a sequel and this movie's ending seems to be setting up for that. I know there's not gonna be one, but you wouldn't know that from the way the film ended.

This reminds me of 10 Cloverfield Lane, which had a somewhat similar ending. But 10 Cloverfield Lane exists in an universe where an alien/monster invasion, of some sort, has already happened. So it's not out of the realm of possibility that when Mary Elizabeth Winstead's character leaves the bunker she's been contained to, that there's gonna be some strange shit going on in the outside world.

This movie felt more like it was trying to be too clever for its own good, even though the movie was perfectly decent without the twist. With the twist, it's worse. I don't know, but I really didn't like it.

Chris Diamantopoulos did a good job here, he certainly made a believable survivalist. And the movie is his and his alone, he's more than solid here, but I just wish he had a better movie to surround himself with.

Don't really have much to say, this is a decent movie that gets worse thanks to a very lame twist. Wouldn't recommend it, but it could have been a worse movie.