Hellacious Acres: The Case of John Glass
Year: 2012
Director: Pat Tremblay
Stars: Navin Pratap, Jamie Abrams
Studio: Bloody Disgusting Selects
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
Running Time: 108 Minutes
“Hellacious Acres: The Case of John Glass” is the latest film to be released on the very excellent Bloody Disgustings Selects label. The film was an official selection at Fantasia Oldenburg Film Festival and the Sitges Film Festival.
This latest offering from Bloody Disgusting Selects follows John Glass, who wakes up from a cryogenic freezer to find himself suffering from amnesia. He discovers that the planet has been mostly destroyed from a world war and an alien invasion. Now, John Glass is thrust into a military operation to help humanity survive from all these disasters. But he gets more than he hoped when he encounters aliens, crazy survivors, equipment that doesn’t work, and bad luck.
By the look of the DVD cover, I was very leery about this film. Right away, you can tell that this is going to be very weird. This looked like it might have the potential to be really good or so bad that I would regret spending time with this film. The end result felt like a mixed bag with the positives outweighing the negatives.
First the positives. One of the things that I liked about this film was the fact that it has very good direction. Writer/ producer/editor/ visual effects supervisor/ co-composer/ director Pat Tremblay does a very good job with the way that the film is presented. I liked the way that the images were grungy. Tremblay does a very good making it noticeable and grindhouse looking. It added to the films apocalyptic tone and weirdness, which helped offset some of the films boring parts. The other thing that I liked about the production of this film was the score. Tremblay and Jean-Francois Deshaies do a very job in making the score of the film very dark and loud. It kept me interested with this film, as it added to the film’s dark and grungy imagery.
Tremblay’s screenplay for the most part was good. He does a very good job with the way that he wrote the dialogue. It felt like it came out of “Napoleon Dynamite” rather than a serious sci-fi film. The dialogue gives the film the quirkiness that it needs considering that there aren’t many characters in this film. I also liked how Tremblay focuses on the main character. Even though the editing aspects hurt this film, Tremblay does a good job exploring the character and his state of mind. He spends his time developing his character’s adjustment to this post apocalyptic world, which is needed to make the character interesting.
Now onto the negatives that I have with this film. These are kind of major complaints that I have with this film. First, the film is way too long for it’s 108 minute time. It felt like there wasn’t much effort on the editing. This film could have been cut another ten minutes or twenty minutes. I know that you have to enhance the main character and his state of mind, but there were scenes that went on way too long without enhancing the character or the story. It felt like my mind was in another place and not in the film. When that happens, your film is not working with an audience. Thankfully, there were parts that grabbed my interest back. The other thing that I didn’t like with this film was the lack of characters. I know that this is a post apocalyptic film, but every time he introduced a new character they would die or disappear from the story altogether. By adding more characters or giving the characters more time, it would have made the film more entertaining. Instead, it felt like the main character walked around the woods for most of the film and that‘s it.
Even though “Hellacious Acres: The Case of John Glass” is my least favorite film in the Bloody Disgusting Selects series, it has very good direction and good dialogue that keeps this film from becoming a complete boring failure.
For more information on this film, you can visit the film’s official website at: http://www.hellaciousacres.com
Review Rating: Three Stars
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