Savageland (2015)

Waste of time

hyped garbage

A Disappointing Continuation

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

I went into this movie with low expectations and by the end of it I was genuinely surprised at how good it was. I was on the edge of my seat the entire movie which is funny in retrospect considering there wasn't a single action scene. The director really knew how to keep the entire movie in a state of suspense.

This movie does a great job of imitating real documentaries, especially the 'true crime' style documentaries. It had the footage from the police station, the crime scene diagrams, coronor's reports, interviews with families of the victims, skeptics, lawyers, creepy black and white crime photos...the whole enchilada (pun intended). But it had no payoff or excitement. It was kinda boring. The thing that makes the true crime documentaries interesting and creepy is that they really happened. This story obviously did not. Also, the story could have been told in half the time.I do give it kudos for bringing to light the way our society will treat and easily scapegoat immigrants.

I will warn you before I include anything that could spoil the plot for you, so read on without worry:SAVAGELAND is a convincing and effective documentary style horror movie with some fantastic twists, quietly infused political commentary, and a high creep factor. The entire population of a small southern border town is discovered brutally murdered, with the exception of one man: an illegal immigrant with a reputation for being a drifter with the questionable past-time of taking photographs picturing dead animals and a particular young girl. The local authorities and citizens of neighboring towns immediately jump to what might seem an obvious conclusion (depending on your beliefs about undocumented migrants and their tendency to commit violence.) that the man is clearly guilty of this horrific mass murder. But when a roll of film shot that night is discovered it points to events no one seems willing to accept.SAVAGELAND does not fit the standard "horror movie" mold; aside from the many bloody crime scene photos, there is no violence, but that's much of what makes it so great- it's an engrossing, slowly unfolding, undeniably creepy story about the events that may or may not have taken place that night.I am a seasoned horror fan who has grown tired of the same lame plot line they feed us over and over ad nauseum... "A group of teens/college students/friends spend the night in a cabin/an abandoned mental hospital/the woods. They party/have sex/take showers until they're picked off one by one by a ghost/monster/madman." SAVAGELAND gives you a much better story than that, if you can live without the boobs and gore.In closing, I recommend that you DO NOT read the other reviews here, they unintentionally ruined big parts of the story for me, and I wonder how much better it could have been if I had gone in clueless.NOW FOR THE SPOILERS (LOOK AWAY!):Wow! What clever twists in this movie! I love how slowly you begin to question who or what the real killers might be. I also want to give HUGE props to the writers for subtly revealing that the writer- who you assumed had figured out the truth- actually blamed the KKK. Everybody in the movie accused the wrong people: people that they already had a bias against... I can see this actually happening in the US as we are now (sadly) the zombies take out an entire town and we all stand around pointing fingers at each other. WELL DONE!

Slow...very slow, but worth a watch.A very different take on zombie films and though this movie leaves a lot to be desired, a definite "A" for effort.Loads of plot holes and I really don't understand the lack of cast listing.This film is listed here on the IMDb, so it's obviously not real footage, so the lack of listing of ALL cast members is not only a disservice to them, but extremely frustrating.Some trivia on parts of the film that were actually interesting, would have been wonderful.Such as, the town. Was it a real town, possibly abandoned? It looked like it and being a film maker myself, trivia is always an important part of helping immerse a viewer in the world you're creating.More explanation into how the border zombies came to be and less on the survivor, would have helped.As I said...great concept, good movie...but needed a LOT of help to see its full potential.