Director: Katie Aselton
Writers: Mark Duplass (screenplay), Katie Aselton (story)
Stars: Katie Aselton, Lake Bell, Kate Bosworth
Synopsis: Three childhood friends set aside their personal issues and reunite for a girls’ weekend on a remote island off the coast of Maine. One wrong move turns their weekend getaway into a deadly fight for survival.
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DIRECTION
The biggest problem with Katie Aselton’s movie Black Rock, is the fact that it’s amazingly unoriginal. Her story is a problem which puts her in a tough situation as a director and it’s easy to tell on screen too. The film starts out the way you’ve seen a million times with three women that get together to go camping on an island that would leave anyone vulnerable. However, I do like how Aselton captures the nature of the island giving you the thriller, bad things are about to happen, aesthetic. It’s about the only thing I liked though. The performances she gets are extremely forgettable and only heighten the originality this movie offers. It’s not even that the performances are bad; the acting is descent but there is nothing new that separates this film from anything else which makes it very stale and boring. Aselton’s music choices are fine and heighten the film in certain places which was helpful considering nothing else “thrilled” me. Overall, Aselton’s direction, while was okay by itself, is nothing new by any means which makes Black Rock very forgettable.
Grade: C-
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SCRIPT
Aselton’s story and Mark Duplass’ screenplay is easily the worst part of this movie. If this was a script that was written 100 years ago, it may be a different (literal) story. Three girls going camping, running into 3 shady males, out in the middle of no-where is something we’ve seen a bazillion time. The first night after the two groups meet up, one of the males tries to rape one of the girls and everything goes down hill from there. Everything is extremely predictable and is pretty much a yawn. The characters have little development and aren’t very interesting which makes it hard for me to root for them. While the film is from the perspective of the girls (the huntees), the males (the hunters) are forced into anger and become revengeful and basically, you find yourself not rooting for anyone and become completely uninterested. It’s a sad story of death and devastation to characters that don’t make you feel anything for them. In a real life situation, it’s heartbreaking to hear a story like this but this specific script doesn’t let you feel that. And I may have mentioned this before but it’s not very original.
Grade: D
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PERFORMANCES
Kate Bosworth’s performance is the only one that was above average but her character has issues I can’t go into without spoilers, it makes this film even more forgettable. Aselton not only wrote and directed this film, but she also stars in it. I’d say this is the best of her three-part duty but I still wasn’t wow’d. I’m not looking for perfection here but at least something that is entertaining and the film is void of that. The rest of the cast is descent but they are forced to re-create characters that you’ve seen a million times and that’s difficult to do. Based on that alone, I’m going to give a generous grade for this section but it’s still their job to make me interested in the characters and I wasn’t able to do that. They do bring passion and some emotion but in a film that’s filled with death and devastation, it’s hardly felt. That is more credited to bad direction and a worse screenplay but the performances could have been more fun.
Grade: B-
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SCORE
Ben Lovett got the nod to compose this film and while it’s not the best thriller score, it certainly adds a lot more to this film than it deserves. It’s got some great strings that add tense music which is placed well and the it creates a great tone to the film. Lovett hasn’t done a whole lot of work but I’d love to seen him do more based off this score.
Grade: B
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