The movie I'm talking about...
MAN VS.
Man Vs. is a Canadian horror film directed and co-written by Adam Massey who uses a nice mix of "found-footage" and regular format to twist a tale of a man stranded in the woods. Chris Diamantopoulos stars in the lead (and basically only) role in the film and does a tremendous job. I know him from playing the handsome sound guy in The Office. But he's also been in Arrested Development, Episodes, and About a Boy.
Alright I'm just going to give you a run down of this film because I don't want to review it badly. I'm happy I watched it and I enjoyed most of it. So bare with me.
Obviously....spoilers.
I got so invested in the story because most of it is so well done and that makes the ending so much more of a let down. It follows Doug, a Bear Grylls rip off, who gets dropped off into the northern Ontario wilderness with some cameras and has to "fend for himself" for five days for his TV show. But during the first night he hears a loud bang and feels what he thinks is an earthquake and in the morning discovers what looks to be a crash path of something large. Immediately I'm like YASSS UFO!!!!!! Soon after there's a great scene where Doug approaches the lake where the crash path seems to end and there's tones of floating dead fish. A wolf appears on the other side but refuses to eat the fish, leaving Doug completely freaked out that there's something wrong with the water. It's harrowing.
As the days progress the satellite phone stops working, his traps are ransacked leaving Doug starving, and someone keeps fucking with his little chess set he plays with to keep himself occupied. Doug now realizes that whoever is fucking with him has to be a person, some backwoods psycho redneck, as he calls them. I'm sitting there like, oh sweet baby angel no...this is clearly aliens.
Running out of food, scared for his well being, Doug begins to hike to the drop off point where his TV crew should be picking him up soon. But along the way he discovers another camp site and there's this really intense scene where Doug goes to hide when he hears noises in the bushes and you realize he's inside a human trap. Like the traps he makes to capture rabbits...but human size!! I was straight up yelling DOUG GET OUTTA THE TRAP YOU FOOL.
When he reaches the drop off point he sets up his cameras all around him to capture whoever is doing this but when he wakes up he finds his cameras have all been tilted down. He loses it and starts screaming and throwing a tantrum. Then something just smacks him and blows him right into the lake. Scared the crap out of me, honestly. He comes out of the water bleeding out of every damn hole in his face and starts to run to base camp.
This is when things start to fall apart. You see, up until this point, our only glimpse of whatever is stalking Doug has been hidden. You see a few brief glimpses of a tall, human like figure that flash by. It works SO well. But then when they finally reveal what's stalking Doug....an alien...it all falls apart completely.
It's some damn awful CG alien/robot hybrid thing. It's awful...AWFUL. It instantly pulled me from the movie and the story which I was completely invested. And although the story held itself up, the alien/robot hybrid thing just ruined everything. What should've been a heart dropping ending turned into a 'is this over yet?' mess.
I'm super bummed.
Basically...Man Vs. is a slow, satisfying build with a scary feel and a shit ending destroyed purely by effects. Watch at your own risk, but give it a shot..purely for the first 45 minutes.
6/10
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