Shadow Walkers

This comment contains spoilers (though not fully explicit), because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to say what bothered me about this film or what made it interesting. So, read after you’ve watched it! It’ll be better if you know as little as possible before you do. About 97% of it is an original movie that holds together and makes sense despite a fairly convoluted plot (which is something to say, because the untraditional supernatural phenomenon that the protagonists face would overwhelm many a screenwriter), and clearly leads to an effective climax after which none of the characters will be the same (and some will no longer be, period, lol). And then, bugger. After that effective climax comes the epilogue, which, besides having a completely different tone than the rest of the movie, is also highly morally controversial (how the storylines of David and Jill are resolved). It’s a real shame, a couple of minutes before the end I was downright ecstatic, but this “I-won’t-exactly-say-what” ruined to a certain extent everything the movie had built so far. And it could have been such a beautiful tragedy! (I’m still giving it a relatively high rating because it’s a very interesting, brilliantly made and original film.) Edit: After a couple of hours I’m able to appreciate those last couple of minutes as a relatively successful and cynical twist that it’s not at all common in Hollywood (the character who’s behaved the worst is the one that benefits the most from the situation). In fact, I kind of like the idea, though I believe that the movie arrives there thanks to breaking the clear rules of that supernatural phenomenon… (09/21/2013)

The film lacks a major climax, but on the other hand, I thought that from the perspective of "big parties," this is a damn original take. It’s an interesting film that plays with doppelgängers and extends the ideas of films like Invasion of the Body Snatchers into a modern interpretation. You won’t get an answer to the question "Why?", but you will get a glimpse of how dysfunctional a group of people can be and how they might handle a crisis that hits them. Admittedly, this is a decidedly unusual crisis situation. I’m quite glad that, despite what the title might suggest, this film has nothing to do with Google+. (11/26/2013)