White Reindeer (2013)

Expected more

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

This is not a comedy. This is not a dark comedy. This is not a black comedy. This is not a drama, a dramedy or anything. This is a vacuum bubble. A nothing, a blank wall. This is the feel nothing movie of the year not good or bad or tragic. A null. A women who has a tragedy in her life before Christmas. She jumps right over grief to catatonia. She discovers the people in her life all have secret lives and discovers she doesn't have a life or any existence of her own. She has zero response to everything. The only excitement in her life is throwing up. I guess that's something. Anyway there's sex and drugs and shoplifting, strippers, swingers and people who are really really ugly naked. And none of it registers or matters in the least.

Awful, awful ...AWFUL! OMG how long is this movie because it seemed like it was 6 hours long. Started it in daylight it finished in darkness. The main actress looks familiar, I coulda swore I've seen her something. I literally spent the entire movie thinking about where I know her from because that thought was more interesting than anything happening in this "movie". I don't understand what half of these comments are going on about. This film is pure garbage, there are no hidden jewels found here. None, don't listen to any of the other reviews, they smokin the crack...I can't get that 10 hours of my life back but I can stop you from losing yours. This movie made no sense, they swore they were being clever with limited dialogue, they swore they were doing some artsy fartsy you'll have a grand epiphany at the end but omg when the movie just cuts off, find someone to slap. They answered nothing in this film, but to be fair they asked nothing! Her husband gets his brains beat of him and he's left for dead , apparently no reason why, and no one seems to care. She becomes depressed, we all just stare at her for hours while she's staring at nothing for hours. We watch her shop online, make purchases and eat a lot of candy canes and drinks tons of eggnog. We get some excitement with an occasional vomit scene. Usually after she's consumed too much alcohol or drugs which she has been getting loaded since dude died. For some reason, she seems to forget all the alcohol and drugs she's been consuming and thinks her frequent trips to the toilet means she might be pregnant.We never know the answer to that pregnancy test because the movie cuts off but I'm sure the puking is all the hard liquor and cocaine. Listen don't bother with this. I can't even finish my review because I'm so bored.Also, with the cover showing cocaines lines I was expecting more drugs and her getting strung out but she takes like a couple hits, I don't even know how the cover and the name lead you to believe its all about coke but there is not much going on. Even her drug fueled night of fun bored me half to death, such a waste of good coke. Lol j/k

Awful. That's really it. To elaborate: depressing, icky, gross, disgusting, pointless, not fun. A waste of my time. I kept watching because it is labeled "comedy" and I was trying to understand why. Never got there. Nothing funny. I also kept waiting for her to commit suicide. That would have been a relief. 10 lines of text required, so here goes. This review was not intended to contain a spoiler alert but one cannot write 10 lines about it without revealing: that movies containing vomit scenes (more than once, I might add) are automatically NOT FUNNY. There were plenty of revealing sex scenes but they were not enjoyable because the main character was miserable throughout. If this movie were only billed as something other than comedy, it would have had an appropriate audience, and I would not have watched it when looking for a FREAKIN' COMEDY.

***Pre-Review Warning: on the off-chance some well-meaning parent looking to entertain their children around X-Mas will, because of the title, stick this in the DVD and then disappear to go shopping, I feel compelled to point out THIS IS NOT THAT KIND OF MOVIE!! ^^^ (... review begins here...) The key to this film may be -- I am not sure -- the "thank yous" at the very end for the "kickstarters". I have seen a lot of films, perhaps more than I care to admit to, but this is unusual. Therefore (and apologies if I got this wrong) it looks to me like the Director/Writer is trying to make the jump from Editor (ie, employee) to Producer (employer) and, to accomplish this enterprise, has taken to heart the old adage, if you can't get $10,000.00 from one person, then get $1 from 10,000 people (or something similar, do the math yourself). So, bottom line, what exactly do we have here? Best I can figure, writer/director Zach Clark has taken upon himself, without any outside help (CLEARLY without outside help) the momentous task of de-constructing X-Mas. The story is about a young wife in her early thirties who is married to the weatherman for the local station. They have a superficially good marriage, adequate sex, she loves him, he has just got a job in Hawaii and her life is about to change. But unfortunately not in the way she expects. Coming home from X-Mas shopping, she finds hubby mysteriously (and graphically) dead from what looks like a robbery gone wrong, and she spends the rest of the film in a downward spiral of self-discovery (and the aforesaid X-Mas deconstruction) as a superimposed-on-screen "___ DAYS BEFORE X-MAS" timer counts down, perhaps as a teaching aid for those who may otherwise be missing the point. (A category which I suspect may include most of the "kickstarter" team). The rest of the story is taken up with the revelation that hubby had a black stripper-mistress, spending money for the sake of feeling better until there is no more; getting to know the Swingers next door; and the revelation that the wife may be pregnant. (If I got any of this wrong, write me, Tweet me, or just think really strong thoughts and I promise to pick them out of the Ether). The direction is promising, surprisingly, and with a better script and actors, might have actually resulted in a better movie. However since the Director is also the Writer, he will no doubt have to have a long talk with himself about that. The acting - well, er, except for Anna Margaret Hollyman, who comes across as genuinely fresh and interesting (and could in the Real World have carried a film similar to this entirely on her own) the rest of the cast seems to be volunteers or extras or (is this even legal?) extra-volunteers who may possibly have paid or "kickstarted" for the privilege of being in the film. Or so it seems. **Factoid: within 2 hrs of posting this review, 5 people coincidentally flagged it as "not useful," which is more people than there are actual leads in the film. X-Files anyone?**