Vacation! (2010)

Truly Dreadful Film

Simply Perfect

best movie i've ever seen.

Absolutely the worst movie.

This movie isn't just about a trip, it is a trip. Four girlfriends rent a vacation house for a week at the beach in North Carolina when one girlfriend randomly plans a trip. The characters have a blasty blast at the beach until that 3-5 day mark hits, then they start getting sick of each other. To light the party back up with some flare, the girls take some LSD and things go straight down hill from there.I won't spoil anymore of the film but I will say if you are going to watch this film do not expect a chick flick at any means. This is not an episode of Jersey Shore.Before I get into the core of the film I will cover performances and direction. The main cast of the females along with the one male actor, who plays a sleazy horn dog, all deliver decent performances that are mostly believable and keep the viewer turned in especially the lesbian character Dee-Dee,who arguably has the best performance in this flick.The direction is pretty well done. The film is very radiant and filled with beautiful scenic views and vibrant colors in every scene. The movie is also shot in three different ways: in black in white,In camcorder format, and with standard film camera that captures gorgeous crisp clear scenes throughout. The director Zach Clark has put a lot of thought and creativity with the story, the colors, the lighting, and the locations. He also does a great job capturing the disturbing moments in this movie and cutting and pasting them into certain scenes that are both shocking and ultimately surprising.One problem I had with the direction and the characters is that in the middle of the film a tragic incident happens to the characters yet they act they don't care and go about their business like they have no sympathy. I wont spoil what happens but I'll say if this happened to me and my friends we wouldn't be dancing to punk rock music at 2 A.M. like they do in the film. Also some parts of Vacation! feel kind of bland especially with some of the conversations characters have, they act like they're bored with each other in a lot of the dialogue they exchange.The movie isn't a whole lot of a comedy,more drama mixed with black comedy that is oh so very dark its hard to laugh at. If anything this movie should partly be labeled horror due to its dark disturbing approach and its unique jump scare tactics. The movie seems to take a lot of inspiration from the films of David Lynch and Michael Gondry. If you are a fan of Lynch's work than you should enjoy Vacation! with is dark elements and extremely strange absurbness.

So there's four girls on holiday. All of them attractive in one way or another, spending most of their time in bikinis and getting drunk. They pass the time casually, not much happens. End of first half. They take some kind of drug (I assume to be acid,) they share the surreal nightmare trip. Something bad happens, one of them will not be going home, ever, they react to it in varying ways.I couldn't help but enjoy the movie, they looked like they enjoyed themselves making it and that sense of fun comes across when watching. The dialogue is so real as we are treated to awkward conversations between people who have not much in common except shared college experiences and wonderfully natural lines such as "oh my god, I bought wigs," "fantastic, tell me more," "they're blonde" which made me giggle at the audacity of the film maker. The uncomfortable silences between the girls are even more realistic and true, it is these gaps in dialogue that accentuate what the movie is; a fun yet uncomfortable film about people and the way they relate to each other.The cinematography from Daryl Pitman is superb, not just for a low budget film but for a film full stop, he uses vivid colours, a locked camera and a clean crisp use of light to highlight the overall feel of fresh playfulness and a tension that's slow to build to barely a simmer.The music and sound design has gotten a lot of play, and rightly so, it is sufficiently hip when required and noticeably helps add to the sense of impending dread after one of the girls remarks that "things are only going to get worse." Whilst the idea of four lesbian/bi-sexual girls drinking and having fun would ordinarily play in to male fantasies without even trying, I left Vacation! massively impressed with Zach Clark's direction and his restraint. The film studies concept of the camera gaze as male is largely thrown out of the window here as at no point did I get the sense that any of the proceedings were being eroticised, or the characters shown in an overtly sexual manner. Even the brief nudity and sexual behaviour is filmed so matter of factly that claims of misogyny would be flimsy at best.Overall this is no Gregg Arraki, there's less plot, but it is a fun and impressive piece of low budget independent non-genre film making worth watching. blahblahblahgay.blogspot

This is not a good movie. It was probably a good excuse to get together a crew and some actors and head to the Outer Banks for a week and rent a house to live and shoot in. Unfortunately, there were not enough rooms for a screenwriter. As a result, the movie doesn't go anywhere. It is predictable and patronizing with superficial characters. I would have appreciated a shred of plot or a character I cared about. Scenes would end, and my brain would yell at me through the haze of the droning soundtrack, "I don't care!" The music was jarring and seemed to be chronicling another movie. It kept suggesting, "OOOOH! SOMETHING SIGNIFICANT JUST HAPPENED!!!", and i was like, "WHAT?!?! WHERE?!! Nevermind, I DON"T CARE!"