ATM is a
horror film by David Brooks in which three co workers are held under siege by a man in a
fuzzy hooded coat in a random ATM vestibule.
The film really only has semi-recognizable faces in it. Josh Peck (The Wackness and
Red Dawn) plays the douchey best
friend. The other two are your general "cookie-cutter" characters. The main role of David (played by Brian Geraghty...astute moviegoers may remember him from I Know Who Killed Me) is your
typical loner, though not by choice, who comes across very forgettable. While Alice Eve (the web-footed chick from She's Out of My League) plays Emily, the love interest. Both Emily and David come off kind of awkward in their scenes together because of their timid apprehension motivated by how they feel the other may respond to an act
of affection.
The film
starts off as your typical horror color-by-numbers, never straying from the formulaic predictability. David's character feels like a love
sick puppy dog, having a school boy crush on the female lead, who is planning on leaving
the office where all three work. So Peck goads David into
making a move before it's too late.
All three coworkers head home together after their company
Christmas party, but decide to make a seemingly quick stop at a random ATM machine along
the way. Once all three characters are in the vestibule, the killer makes his
sudden and mysterious appearance. Kind of standing directly between the group
and their vehicle while the temperature continues to drop, causing the trio to
stress and panic at the predicament they find themselves in.
The killer's intentions to murder everyone are pretty clear after the first
death scene, which comes across pretty cheesy and unrealistic, as does most
of the first portion of the movie. As a horror film, which it is tagged as, it is
very underdeveloped and the pace was unbalanced. It was your basic horror cliché,
group of a people make a seamlessly harmless stop and unknowingly fall into
the trap of a psychopath. Which all events could have been avoided if they had
done some logical thinking. But that's only if you look at this as a horror fick. The
killer's motives are never truly explored, as well as the reason he exists.
The film
feels like a thriller in the sense that you're not watching the film to get scared, but more so
following the story to see what happens next. The ending, without giving anything away, is a prime example of how it could be viewed as a thriller. Viewed
as a horror, the characters feel flat and one dimensional, but as a thriller
you're given enough information to leave you scratching your heads and wanting
answers that may or may not arrive.
The best part of the movie is the final few
minutes in which the killer's true attack is revealed to the audience. Credit goes to the editing team for sort of saving the film from complete failure. What I
didn't like was that the slow pacing in the beginning made it difficult to care about the perile the characters were in. The fear level was really minimal
and, to me, really had only one OMFG moment.
I cant stop
praising the ending of this film. If it wasn't for the fact that you have to
sit through the first two thirds of the movie, I would recommend ATM to everyone just to witness the ending.
Thanks for reading,
Johnny Deviant
Comments
Post a Comment