Surviving Crooked Lake (2009)

Sick Product of a Sick System

Nice effects though.

Admirable film.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Stephannie lost her father and has relied on older brother Jonah. She's afraid of the waters and has attended summer camp with Jonah. It's the last summer for her and her friends Alysha, Candice, and Morgan. Steph reluctantly goes on a canoe trip with them after Jonah makes a switch to be their guide. One night, Morgan gets embarrassed with her crush Jonah and runs off. Jonah trips in the dark chasing her. The girls get lost while the unconscious Jonah gets worst and passes away.It's a real indie with amateur actors. In that sense, this is pretty good for what it is. The girls are competent actors. The movie starts in a hazy dreamy summery way. The camera lingers on the girls a little too closely. The movie takes another step up. There is one solid emotional moment when Stephannie refuses to let go. However, I get the feeling that the script simply runs out of ideas. The girls are nicely drawn characters. The writing needs to take advantage but it doesn't get to the next level. Steph shouldn't be left alone like that. It's the dialog and the movie simply runs out of steam in the end.

If Surviving Crooked Lake feels a little amateurish to you, perhaps it is because (and I know this for a fact) it was made by a group of University students at the York University in Toronto. Now it sounds a bit more impressive huh? This is a feature length film! and whats more...it works, not brilliantly, but sufficiently.If you were to put Deliverance, The Blair Witch Project, and Cast Away into a blender, you would get the recipe for Surviving Crooked Lake. Despite being highly derivative, and using a few too many contrivances to carry the story along, it is a pretty wild adventure with some heart and also some horror. In the first twenty minutes, I was actually a little dubious about Surviving Crooked Lake. The intro plays out a bit too much like a chick flick, with silly lines. Four out of the five girls in this film turn into characters as we progress, but the fifth does nothing, except look like Sarah Polley. (Personally I would've liked to see her get eaten). This aside, I have no other major complains about the execution of the story. The climax is very strong actually, exceptionally well directed, and scary, even psychological. By the end, Surviving Crooked Lake becomes a story not so much about survival or friendship, but about letting go of inner demons. Aside from being occasionally annoyed, I enjoyed Surviving Crooked Lake, and I do recommend it.

The lack of believability in certain aspects of how even the basic instinct for survival is portrayed here is so unrealistic as to leave one wondering if this was conceived by a high schooler. The acting is surprisingly good and the cinematic direction is above par. Even the narration is tolerable. The hardest and most painful part of this movie to endure is the lack of realism and pragmatism on the part of the characters trying to survive in the wild. It simply and quickly becomes pretentious and irritating to watch seemingly smart people give up their god-given smarts to pursue a false sense of nobility while leaving common sense behind. It actually grated on me off more and more for the last 3/4 of the movie. You don't shout racial epithets while walking through bad neighborhoods and you don't carry rotting, bloody things endlessly through the woods for basically the same reason. When you see a decent movie that does SO much wrong inasmuch it is simply and completely so unrealistic, it is truly painful for the creative mind to endure. And, in this movie, to be specific, the character you most want to have respect and sympathy for becomes someone that you want slap back into reality every few minutes while you are wondering about what else is on TV at the moment.

Sorry if your kid's are in this but that is no reason to pretend that this is a good movie, or give it a 10/10 vote.Put simply, this movie is very, very bad. It makes no sense at all, some how the guy in it manages to kill himself, i'm still unsure how that happened, then the girls inexplicably decide to walk out of the place carrying the body. Even though it only took them a day or two to paddle to where he died.No, instead of just paddling back the way they came (it's a lake according to the title) they give up and try and go on foot and predictably fail.No idea what this movie was trying to say, or do.Oh, apparently there are 'rapids' on lakes these days as well, and actually the lake looks like a river some of the time, when it suites the story.Story is a rather grandio term when really this is a mis-match of other stories shamefully pasted together into a nonsensical waste of an hour and half.Don't even download this for free.