Shades (2016)
Matt Boiselle
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Starring CJ Natoli, Stephen Goodman, Leland Montgomery
Directed by Nick Lawrence, Rachel Tucker
On your shoulder, in your hand, on your belt…and now, off the tip of your nose. Welcome one, welcome all to the wonderful (and nausea-inducing) world of first-person POV (a little light on the found-footage side). Directed by the duo of Nick Lawrence and Rachel Tucker, Shades goes inside a seemingly harmless situation, before exploding into a complete cluster f**k, and I’ll tell you what, this was a pretty fun ride to go on.
The movie follows three friends taking a “bro-cation” in sunny L.A., and the interest towards a pretty young lady leads the fellas into more trouble than they could have ever imagined…aah, the things we do when a’ courtin! From the perspective of one of the guys brand new sunglasses cam perched on his honker, we see an otherwise routine span of off-time for the boys, partying, watching the ladies, and just enjoying their time in the solar rays. Now the trouble begins – when a drug deal is captured on the glasses cam, the guys in their infinite wisdom decide it’s best to use the footage as a bargaining chip so they may safely exit L.A. post-haste, but instead manage to further piss off our angry clan of drug dealers, and before you know it, the chase is on. The idea is fresh, exciting and entertaining, but when the aforementioned chase does take place, better stock up on the anti-nausea pills cause this one’s about to get extremely shaky.
The non-stop filming is a nice touch, usually since we’re so used to seeing cut shots and edited scenes when watching a POV flick, but this almost has the feel of real-time in panic mode, and the glasses cam continues to run, regardless of whose schnoz it’s seated upon. The trio of main performances from Natoli, Goodman, and Montgomery are admirable and capture the dude-isms at their fullest extent, however it felt as if the remainder of the cast-list was absent on script-read day as more often than not the portrayals came off extremely stiff and forced. Now while this film very well may appeal in full to the found-footage aficionados, I want everyone to remember that there is an abundance of herky-jerky motion contained within, alongside some shoddy audio capturing – but don’t let that hold you back. Shades is a pretty fun jaunt to partake in, even with that pukish-rumbling in your gut from all that running around.
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Film
Categorized:Reviews
