Film Review: Text (2008)

SYNOPSIS:

Four friends search for the answers to a series of deadly text messages killing students at their high school.

REVIEW:

Oh my gosh, did you ever see one of those films that drags so much, is so incomprehensible, is littered with mundane acting and had no plot points that you can even really grasp any meaning of? Well “Text” is not only one of those films, it is “the” film. One of the things that’s hard as a reviewer is when you make every effort to pull something out to talk about and are left with confusion and more harm than good . By the end of the torturing 90 minutes, I was so glad to hit the eject button that even dreaded spending more time reviewing it. Now let’s check the facts. Its a low budget movie with many of the talent being first timers or short bio histories. OK, I get it… consider the budget and the object. Though my first question would be who approved this script and thought it would make for a great film to spend $ on? In fact checking, its looks like it was funded mostly by the town of Parker, however the town probably didn’t read the script.

This film had no momentum and the story does all it can to “disengage” the viewers. Now the story as much as I could tell was based on a local high school where students are getting killed off one by one due to receiving a coded text message. The problem is the idea of the text message was vague. From what I could tell either the code induces some sort of killing hypnotism, or the music is coded with some sort of killing match orders, or one of the students just doesn’t like his classmates that much. Pick one or all 3, it’s my guess. Students are killed off very lamely and cheaply. Usual methods include neck slashes, drowning per floor puddles or being stabbed by a propped up knife wedged between “charmin toliet paper”??????

Now frequent low budget movie actor Reggie Bannister makes an appearance in the film as a security guard named “Reggie” who I never really figured out what his purpose was. Yes, the film was so disjointed that your name actor was completely invisible as far as plot tie-in goes. The rest of the acting crew consisted of badly casted teens who worked more on showing no emotion than any emotion at all. Proof of this is seen in the laughable death scenes where they discover dead bodies through out the film of there colleagues and show no emotion whatso ever. I had to rewind this a couple times just to double check that inexcusable fact. Their best friend gets their neck slit and blood lays across the floor and all they say is “oh sh*t” and then continue in conversation………cmon now…….whos directing this thing? Oh ya, Brian McCulley, how soon we forget.
The only stand out performance for me was the role of Jimmy played by actor Josh Phillips. Although short lived, the role was comedic, well paced and fun to watch.

Let’s talk about the soundtrack. Now I’ve heard enough of these to know what works and what doesn’t. The score if you call it that for “Text” was one that I’m sure sounded decent when played by itself as a .mp3 sample but ended up really defeating the mood when the mood was needed. Sure its orchestral, droning, sounds effects driven or at least based but it carried on from scene to scene with music that “didn’t” help drive the actions. In turn making the film feel way more lethargical than it needed to be. The film seemed void of any impact sounds or suspense sound effects, so what we were left with was a soundtrack that is better served as a sleep aid than anything else. In one scene we have a guy skating boarding in the dark for 7 minutes (give or take). Apparently the scene had a need for a amateur guitar player diddling on power chords for the full length. The kind that you’d yell over to your next day neighbor to play something else or get guitar lesions. Not a good call.

I’m sorry because I do “root” for the independents when they are good. This is simply not a good product on any level. My advise is to shelf it and write it off on your taxes next year as a loss as you’ll only do more damage sending this to reviewers than collecting brownie points. Whatever the story or plot was for “Text” it completely lost me. I’m gonna have to pass on this altogether.

Text (2008)