The Veil (2016)

Sadly Over-hyped

People are voting emotionally.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

A lot of people think this is basedon the Jim Jones famous cult massacre but its actually based on the Hale Bop comet cult and its actually a true cult who poisoned each other with an apple pie special over 3 days as they believed aliens were coming to transport them to another world - how some people can fall for these cults is beyond me but it makes for fascinating viewing.Thomas Jane was superb and reminds me of David Koresh another cult nutjob. Jessica Alba was just a bit of fluff on a stick and could have been substituted with any actress! I quite like cult type movies and there haven't been many lately!It is a bit slow but there are some real jump scares - I messed ma pontaloons on at least 3 occasions so its not without its scares.Overall though its pretty standard fair but worth a watch if you are a horror fan!

A grim answer to the question "What the heck happened to Jessica Alba?", The Veil starts with a blasphemous mass and ends with a crucifixion. Heavily relying on the Jim Jones' mass suicide with just a dash of the Manson family, it mixes classic cinematography with post-modern seasoning, found footage (please Lord, make it STOP!) and an unreliable narrator. Mix the whole in a Cabin in the Woods environment (after carefully expunging all said movie's cleverness and voilà, here's your bad movie of the week. You watch what is filmed of the characters; you watch what the characters film; you also watch a lot of the characters watching the movie they found. Call it meta if you wish. One calls it crap.Sarah Hope, natch (Lili Rabe, of American Horror Story's fame, here given absolutely nothing to do) is the sole survivor of Heaven's Veil, a cult led by Jim Jacobs (Tomas Jane, hamming it up as if the world was really about to end). Maggie Price, natch (Jessica Alba) wants to shoot a documentary on the massacre, because her father, an FBI agent, committed suicide after such an horror happened on his watch. She has a crew, which bears no importance whatsoever since they will all die anyway. OK. Let's share a moment of non-nonsense approach now, shall we?So: jump scares (at least 6), rocking chair, moth, whispering ghosts, scary doll, spiritualism seance, demonic mumbo-jumbo, torch lights running out of battery, no cellphone coverage. All checked. Everything that could possibly go wrong does so from the start, but the characters are real troopers, so they carry on. Also, they are dumb as dumb can be. Wait a minute, no cymbal-crashing monkey?For some reason, there is ONE videotape, labeled "Experiment 23", and it's shitty as hell, but all the rest is shot in glorious Super 8 Cinemascope, immaculately edited, of course. What Experiment 23 shows makes no sense whatsoever to what will follow, but they all get hooked on it like a 20$ hooker on her first crack pipe. "We need to watch the rest of these films", someone says. NOOOOOO! RUUUUUUN!Not to spoil much, but Jim Jacobs aims at retrieving the three nails of the Cross to acquire eternal life, a project absolutely as legit as ruling the world via the creation of a social network or creating new California property development land through an earthquake. Jesus was nailed to the Cross, so the spirit is nailed to the body, you know. Of course you do.Embarrassed by so many references it would be pedantic and tedious to list them, movie pedestrianly proceeds to its bitter end. FBI has ESP. Sarah is not what she seems to be. Jessica Alba gets immortal the hard way. Now let's all have a quizz: why is that thing called The Veil? Oh, rutabaga.

I am the biggest critic of horror films. If there's just one thing that doesn't seem right, I automatically dislike a film. I really liked this, though.It has a unique story, one that hasn't been touched upon very often: scary cults. It has a good cast who all work well together. There's not too much crappy dialogue, like the ubiquitous "Die you f-ing b****!" that is found in a lot of movies. (I've never understood how someone, who is fighting for their life, could be thinking of screaming cuss words at an attacker, and I curse like a truck driver.) I'm not a huge fan of Jessica Alba but this role worked for her.The scares were a success. I jumped a couple of times.Overall I think it's a very good scary movie. Is it Oscar-worthy? No, but that's not why I watched it.

Overall was a very strong recent horror film, especially when compared to recent "failures" such as; Unfriended, Occulus, Ouijia, and Devil's Due (plus plenty more).This movie isn't perfect by any means, but for the standards of horror and being an enjoyable movie, yes it was very good. Some of the events where a little too predictable, but I didn't find those parts too ruining for the overall film. The supernatural aspect was definitely interesting in this one, especially when pairing it with a suicide cult (oh and no it's not ripping off the suicide cult from V/H/S 2 BTW, it's very different from that one so have no fear in thinking that this film might be ripping off other horror films. Trust me, it's not.).Is it scary? Kind of. Probably not nightmare inducing for me, but I think the scariest aspect is revolving around the cult and how the followers blindly follow the leader much like cults in real life. Is it re watchable? I would say so in all honesty. Is it amazing? Ehhh, not amazing but very good and deserves the rating of 7/10 from me. Does it end well? Yes and no. Some of the actions of a certain character irked me towards the end and I found myself very disappointing in this character. However I will say the ending wasn't bad really by any means, especially when playing off a certain part of the beginning of the film. Also another good part of the closing of this film is the very last line said. For some reason the very subtle, nonchalant line at the very end really got to me, and I am sure once you watch it you'll understand why.