Paintball

I really don't care for modern horror films that much. Many of them just seem so terrible that I usually don't bother with them. "Paintball" is yet another example of unoriginal and cliché horror. "Paintball" is another great example of not just a bad horror movie, but also a bad action movie.

8 people are dropped into the wilderness to compete in a paintball tournament. However, they come to realize that the game is more deadly than they thought as they find out that the enemies are using actual guns instead of paintball guns to hunt and kill them.

Firstly, my biggest problem with this movie is how badly written the characters are. There is literally no depth at all to any of them. I didn't care at all when they died off. In this case, however, I was actually looking forward for the characters to die because the movie was so bad, I was eager for it to end. Character development matters. Take these 3 words and tweet it to everyone who has ever thought of directing a horror movie.

Also, most of the characters are idiots. When one of them was being shot at, he ran right out into the middle of combat making him completely vulnerable just to get himself shot and killed. Also, some of the characters behave in ways no one would behave in in real life. When one of them was in trouble, instead of helping him, his friend just took his bulletproof vest and left him to die when he had more than enough time to save him. At one point in the movie, one of the other characters pushed someone into a trap causing her to die for no apparent reason whatsoever. There is no reason for him to do what he did. The movie tried to have him go insane but that was a very unrealistic and lazy way to kill off one of the characters. Also, one of the characters lost his mind and ran away from the group leaving himself vulnerable and he got himself killed because of his action. That was another unrealistic and lazy way to kill off a character. Also, when one of the characters picked up a machete and turned around, she stabbed one of her friends, killing her. That was yet another lazy and stupid way to kill off a character. Because of this, I was easily able to predict when each character was going to die because of their stupidity and how predictable the movie is. In short, this movie has some of the most idiotic and deficient movie characters ever put to screen.

As for the action, it's just typical gunfights and not much more. There was nothing impressive in any of them and despite a long take near the beginning, nothing else stood out whatsoever. What I really hated about them was the shaky camera. I have no idea why so many people still do this. Moviegoers hate it when movies have this. It distracts us from the movie and it gives me a headache. It is also bad cinematography in my opinion.

Like most low-budget, modern horror movies, the acting is garbage. The reason this is so common is because many good actors know better than to star in modern horror movies because they know that they will ruin their careers by doing so. Many horror movie directors are well aware of this so they hire those actors who are very untalented and take any role to get a paycheck. They hope that they will be successful enough to hire great actors. However, the movies they make are so bad that they usually sell poorly so their careers usually don't last very long. None of the actors in this movie are impressive at all and I felt that none of them gave a good performance.

Also, the ending left me more than underwhelmed. I was hoping for an explanation for what went on in the movie and I didn't get much of one. It barely contained any exposition and I was more confused in the end then I was in the beginning. Its ending is much too thin. The movie doesn't provide enough clues in order for me to be able to speculate a theory about what I think the origin of the area they were in is.

The only reason this doesn't get a 1/10 is that the premise is actually pretty good and creative for once. The movie shows some promise in the opening 10 minutes and it actually has an original concept. Also, it actually has a pretty decent long take. Unfortunately, the movie ruins any minimal hopes I had for it after 15 minutes.

In conclusion, if you don't mind the style over substance, idiotic characters, and unoriginal and poorly-executed action sequences and if you just like watching senseless gun-battles then this movie is for you. However, if you don't like that then you're likely going to find this to be yet another worthless horror movie which is completely inferior to dozens of other classic action, war, and horror movies out there which are actually well made. My tip is to avoid this at all costs.

First off, Paintball bets the farm that the viewer has never seen a movie before. If this is your first movie, then you're in luck, as it only gets better from here. Paintball's storyline is a combination of recycled, yet shockingly under-developed, themes and settings that attempts to create an air of mystery and horror by keeping the viewer in the dark. This is respectable approach, however, nothing ever makes sense in the movie… and not in the cool Donnie Darko way. It's like a bunch of 8th graders wrote a story in a half hour and never even bothered even coming for a reason why any character in the movie acts the way they do or any situation in the movie would be plausible. You can tell a movie stinks if the only way to move the story forward is for the characters to do the opposite of what any rationale or irrational human would do. Example 1A: People are dying and everyone still walks around inexplicably yelling with their paint guns cocked and loaded. I would think that even the dimmest bulb would realize that staying quite would be to their benefit.

Second, the movie is made horribly as well. You can tell that no shots were thought out ahead of time. The camera will follow someone, they'll drop a helmet, the camera will linger on the helmet, and the helmet will never be heard from again. I can see who a little misdirection can help a movie, but after repeatedly seeing useless visuals, you start to get the feeling that they were just letting the camera roll with hopes of making it work in the editing room. Also, the special effects are terrible. Every effect looks like it had a maximum budget of $5. I can watch a horrible movie and laugh along with the best of them (see American Ninja 3). However, they took so many short cuts in this movie, that there is nothing remotely redeemable about it. You can surely finding something to disappoint you that isn't 85 minutes long.

This gets two stars only because I've seen Gourmet Zombie Chef from Hell.

Some whiny and annoying card-board characters are dropped off in the field where the games with the opposing team will be held.After some paintball sessions an unknown hunter begins to kill them using real ammo."Paintball" is a highly derivative survival flick which reminded me "The Zero Boys" or "Masterblaster"(both flicks from 80's).The characters are annoying and not developed,the plot is predictable and there is plenty of clichés.The cinematography is shaky and the killings shot via grey night vision quickly become irritating.If you want a good survival flick check out "Rituals","Deliverance" or "Hunter's Blood".Unfortunately "Paintball" is one to avoid.5 out of 10.

I guess pun intended with the summary line. The idea is really good, but the movie itself isn't. It's a shame, that they couldn't make something out of it. The title gives away a little bit and of course you can imagine, that this won't be a regular Paintball game, that you will watch in this movie.

There are quite a few neat scenes, but especially one gimmick (where the camera uses a filter and therefor the picture you're seeing is "different") that it uses, wears off pretty quickly. Add to that, whiny characters (not all, but too many) and not that many different ones, so you could root for a particular character. It moves along too slow and any tension that gets build up, is destroyed pretty quickly. Some nice (gory) scenes won't help that either (not to mention, that some of them are shot through the aforementioned filter, which is really bad).

You will love or hate this one. The originality of this flick is also the way people disliked it. It's the first movie from director Daniel Benmayor. It's a good effort but of course he tried to combine other movies in his flick. It's a kind of survival flick with a mix of torture porn. So far so good but when it comes to the slaughtering he decided to do it from first person view. No probs but he showed it to us in the style predator/terminator but with colorless and negative viewing. So suddenly the blood turns white or grey and that doesn't work at all. It works for some shots but almost all killings are from the killer's point, a bit too much. It's not too gory, and there is some suspense but if he only had added the right color for the RED stuff well, it would have been much better. The storyline is very simple, some things aren't really explained but still, it's not that bad, one to see and probably forget.