The Brink (2006)

People are voting emotionally.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

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.

Blistering performances.

A back of my DVD proudly claims:a brilliant engineering student named Megan sets out to find the blueprints for the device that Thomas Edison completed right before his death;a device for talking to the dead.She assembles a group of friends to help her build it in a dilapidated house,never sharing with them the history of the building;a family brutally murdered one another within its walls years ago and they're just itching for a trip back to the other side.The device they put together allows that trip to happen and a very disturbed evil finds its way to our world."The Brink" is a watchable indie horror flick with some idiotic moments and pretty strong acting.The budget is tiny,the plot is routine and there is a minimal amount of blood.Worth a rental but nothing more.

The Brink starts in 'West Orange, NJ 1931' as inventor Thomas Edison's (Monty Wall) latest creation has unexpected consequences... Jump forward to the present day where engineering student Megan (Rachel Blazer) has tracked down the schematics for Edison's invention which supposedly brings ghosts into our world, Megan convinces two of her student friends Bianca (Heather Chase) & Todd (Jason Flowers) to help her build the machine which they agree to. They set themselves up in an old abandoned & isolated farmhouse 50 miles from anywhere of note & get to work, they quickly discover that Megan's ex boyfriend Leo (Jeff Ryan) has joined the party as the 'voice of reason'. Together they build the machine & turn it on at which point a ghostly figure (Matt Miller) appears holding an axe which it then uses to try & kill Todd, whoever said ghosts were friendly...Edited, photographed, co-written, produced & directed by Benjamin Cooper I certainly didn't love The Brink but I saw some potential here & thought it was watchable if nothing else. The script by Cooper & John Bowker takes itself extremely seriously & is a little slow to get going which it's main problem, films such as The Brink need to hit you hard straight away & keep you interested throughout, something which the makers of The Brink didn't do & it's over 40 minutes into the film before the four friends turn on the machine by which time it will have probably lost 75% of it's audience who will have either turned it off & stuck Terminator 2 (1991) in the DVD player or switched it over to MTV. Hey, I'm all for a slow measured build up but this is ridiculous & quite frankly there's not that much to build up too! The character's are OK actually & despite being of the teenage variety they didn't annoy me that much, the dialogue was alright & the basic story had potential especially a really neat twist towards the end which a lot more should have been made out of. Generally speaking The Brink isn't a particularly great film & I won't be in any hurry to see it again but there are one or two nice moments here & the story with it's twist had potential which unfortunately wasn't fully realised probably to the low budget & technical restrictions.Director Cooper does a decent job & I have to say The Brink actually looks like a proper film as opposed to a glorified home movie which is how I think a lot of recently made low budget shot on a camcorder type horror junk that litters video shop shelves look. I wouldn't say it's particularly scary but there are one or two atmospheric moments dotted throughout, there's a distinct lack of gore & violence as well. Someone gets her head sliced in half horizontally with an axe accompanied by a sound effect that resembles someone stepping in some mud & there's a chopped off hand but nothing else worth mentioning.I'm not sure what sort of budget The Brink had but I'll bet it was pretty low so bear that in mind, at least it's reasonably well made & watchable if nothing else. The Brink has a similar storyline to White Noise (2005) & even though it was apparently shot 2 years before White Noise came out The Brink was released straight-to-video/DVD after. The acting was OK but nothing special.The Brink was better than I had expected although to be honest that wasn't going to be hard, I can't really recommend it as my head tells me it's a terrible film but my heart says otherwise. I'll leave this one up to you & give it a middle of the road 5 stars out of 10.

This movie sucked. There are these 4 college students (all relatively intelligent) who want to speak to the dead(apparently while Thomas Edison was inventing the phonograph and the light bulb, he also invented a machine to speak to the dead). Why do they want to speak to the dead? Who the hell knows. I say wait a few years...you'll get there, First they go to this horrible abandoned house, then the build the machine and then when it works the "fun" starts. For a horror movie to be worth the time there has to be either one of two things...good story, or lots of people to kill. Since this one had neither, I will say no more. If I could meet the director, I would say "Watched White Noise did we?" and slap him briskly across the face with a glove.

The Brink: 3 out of 10: The Brink is competently lensed by Benjamin Cooper and features a pretty good performance by supporting player Heather Chase as well as decent performances by the rest of the cast. For a low budget movie this looks pretty good.The only problem is that it has the pacing of Manos Hands of Fate and the dialogue of a public service announcement.The movie's plot is that of a young obsessed girl who tracks down lost plans to Thomas Edison's spirit radio. Does she auction them off for millions and retire happy in her youth? Nah. She gets a few friends together and decides to build it in a spooky abandoned house. (No points for guessing that the house is haunted and if you can't guess she is obsessed with this house in particular the scripts over the top foreshadowing will definitely clue you in.) This set up easily takes half the film. And since by definition nothing scary can happen till the ghost radio is turned on it is extremely pedestrian. (The non-natural verbiage these poor actors are forced to say makes the proceedings drag even more) Of course no one informed the script of this obvious fact so we are treated to endless scenes of people unloading the car while the soundtrack warns of impending doom. I'm still not sure what horrible fate the filmmakers thought we would imagine happening between the car trunk and the kitchen table.The ghosts do show up eventually and honestly except for a sad Andrea Yates style scene at the end they are neither scary nor impressive.The film does seem confused by its own plot at times. (The main character refers to her little brother and finds a doll she used to have yet in flashbacks she is clearly an infant. You're opening a valuable suitcase on the side of a busy highway why? You bring extra fuses for a house you have never been to but you don't bring fuses for the machine you built?) Plus you really can't talk to the dead with a regular ghost radio. What you need is a ghost CB radio. That would rule.