Now, as with all thrillers, the most important question is, “Does the ending work?”
Well, the ending is a bit far-fetched and is more an explanation of the events, done in a retrospective interview given by Victor, displaying his new knowledge. Despite the fact that this would normally be a bit of a cop-out, in this situation, it actually works pretty well, despite the minimal evidence Victor offers about his new knowledge. Most of this information comes out via a news interview with a local TV station in Britain, so the interviewer shows much of the skepticism in her tone and commentary that the viewer feels. This shows that the film is not taking itself too seriously and allows Victor’s vehement rebuttal, based on his impassioned convictions, to do much to sell the believability of the ending.
While, most of the questions raised in the film are answered, there is one that is never broached, “What on earth causes the ‘God’ killer’s paintballs to have the capability of killing people?”
Visual Look
This movie used many different camera perspectives to tell the story. Each of these is supposed to be from a distinctly different type of camera: Victor’s documentary camera, the camera that the killer has, as well as a variety of security cameras. This was a very creative idea and gave the movie a very personal visual look that pulls you into the happenings and proceedings.
Despite the coolness of the visual concept, it invited a multitude of issues that cropped up because of it.
The first such issue was due to the fact all of these varied camera perspectives were shot with the exact same camera: the Sony DSR-PDX 10. For future films with a similar theme, I would encourage the filmmaker to experiment with lower quality cameras for security cameras and other variations for production. Since that wasn’t done on this film, I would recommend looking at digitally damaging the footage of different cameras, utilizing a variety of after-market video plug-ins, so that each has a distinct look, with the security camera footage looking the most grainy and low-rez.
Another issue comes from the very fact that there were only three sources cited in the introduction to the film: Victor’s cam, the killer’s cam, and security footage. Unfortunately, the different camera styles get a bit confusing because of some irregularities in each “type” of footage. The first one is an easily remedied issue because there are a few shots in which the “documentary” camera (which is easily identifiable because it always has a time stamp and a location stamp on it) does not have any time or location stamps superimposed on it. Obviously, just adding the time, date, and location stamps to these shots will give a universal appearance to this footage. The second irregularity, however, is especially problematic and impossible to correct in post. The problematic shots, which show up most noticeably in the final shootout, are those where the camera is clearly neither the killer’s nor the documentary camera, which leaves only “security camera” footage. “Security camera” footage is fixed, high-positioned footage, whereas the footage in question is clearly both eye-level and handheld. Unless there is some sort of strange robotic security camera I am unaware of, this is a problem. This situation needed greater forethought to plan high angles that could be security footage, rather than just grabbing run-and-gun footage and splicing it in later.
The hand-held footage of this film was a constant theme. I completely understand this for much of the film (with the obvious exception of the aforementioned security camera shots), but it tended to be shaky, despite the director’s use of a video camera harness. While the motion will not make you as sea sick as the last two Paul Greengrass’ movies, a homemade steadycam device could have helped it out. For future films, I would encourage the director to look through the Camera section of our “Tips and Tricks” area, where we have a listing of three or four different homemade steadycam setups.