Review of Paintball (2009) by A.d. V — 16 May 2010

Redball Woods. The destination for professional paintballers.

The team start their paintball expedition in a hostage scenario, as everyone is in the back of a truck, bound by manacles and with black hoods over their heads.

Once they are released and they are able to remove their hoods they are designated their squad positions. They are all strangers to one another.

The mission they are given is that they have to capture six flags in twenty four hours. At each flag will be an item box for collection but of course, there will be another team out there, somewhere.

At the first flag the team gets ambushed but they manage to get the first item box which for some reason contains a bullet proof vest. Surely not a good sign. Still, it does come in handy when someone starts playing for real although it's not going to be any help for the team members without it and before you know they are a man (or woman) down.

The unseen killer wears thermal goggles at all times and although most of the kills are done via the killers pov, there isn't much of the red stuff on display as the goggles render everything green. I didn't find this a problem as the kills were done well and some were quite inventive. A favourite being the landmine kill.

The film has some good plot development about forty minutes in, which expands the story beyond the whole 'lone nut-job' scenario.

Infact, the only real problem I had with this film was the last minute or so.

There is a scene at the end with some blood pooling on a death certificate and that is the point the film should've ended. What comes next, is pointless and of no relevance at all but at least it wasn't the typical 'oh look the killer is still out there' ending.

Overall this was much better than expected. When I first heard about this movie I had visions of the paintball exercise from Childs Play 3, so it was nice that it was better than my (admittedly low) expectations.