Not as bad as the people are making out

nisabine

I don't normally write reviews but after watching this film & reading the negative 1 star reviews I felt I had to defend the film a little. Don't get me wrong the film is far from perfect & there is an awful lot wrong with it but I feel lots of people on here have been incredibly harsh.

First I will deal with some of the reviewers' main concerns about the set up of the film & 'plot holes' & then let you know my own issues with it.

1. Irresponsible mother - seems people are critical because she gives her son her phone to play with. I can totally see this happening, I see children all the time be given their parent's phone to play when trying to keep them entertained, for example when queuing. There are so many apps now that can do all kinds of things so don't think it is far fetched to see how it could be linked to the car & the child accidentally locks himself in.

2. The dirt road - Some people take issue with the on-board computer taking her down the dirt road in the first place, this should not have happened. Why not? The computer told the mother there was an accident on the freeway & there was a delay. The mother not wanting to get stuck in a huge traffic jam (who does?)tells the computer to find an alternative quickest route which it did.

3. Mother smoking weed in the desert - she decides to have a cigarette, no doubt because having your child locked in a car you can't break into is quite stressful & finds half a joint so smokes that instead. Again she is stressed and just resting for a second and needs to relax for a moment. From some of the negative reviews you would think that the mother called up Snoop Dogg & pals, forgot about the kid & went off for a non stop three day smoke session!

4. Removing the deer caused the car to roll backwards - if the car is on a gradient & the wheels were caught up in the deer then when deer is removed, the car would roll backwards with nobody in it to drive it.

5. Why is the kid wearing a bear costume when it is so hot? - anybody with small kids know that they can be very particular in what they want to wear & they don't care if an outfit is suitable for the current weather conditions. Remember they were only going for a short drive to Grandma's house & I am sure she would have air conditioning in the house. I don't believe the Mother was expecting to get trapped in the car in the desert for a couple of days, the bear costume would not have been an issue if he wanted to wear it.

6. Why would the car unlock the doors because it is falling off a cliff? - This would be a safety feature, modern cars now have something similar. Lots of cars now will automatically lock when you are driving but in an accident where airbags are deployed the locks automatically unlock, so you don't get trapped in the car after a collision. The car in the film is more advanced so it would have detected that it was falling so a collision was imminent so for safety unlocked itself.

Now my issues with the film (some have been raised with other reviewers):

1. Supposed to be more advanced car but when she calls people she has to press the touchscreen, even now we can dial people by voice.

2. I know smoking is bad for you etc but still lots of people do it so I think that it was laughable that the car had that warning message and told her to evacuate the car when she lit a cigarette. The car makers would surely know that some customers would like to smoke so this would not be a feature of the car.

3. Once the warning comes up about the smoking, the computer asks the mother if she wants to switch to manual, if she does it will switch all assisted features of the car off. The mother does go to 'full manual' so surely then the app would have been useless & the kid would not have been able to lock himself in.

4. The fire she sets near the aeroplane - this seemed quite a distance from the car so the problem here is, if the fire department did come out and came from the other direction & she was back at the car & fell asleep or past out from the heat etc then they may well have come dealt with the small simple fire & gone back again & completely missed her. Surely it would have been better to set a fire closer to the car so that whoever came would have seen her.

5. Letting the car roll of the cliff - I have a hard time with this because it was quite a drop & the kid could have been seriously injured or killed. Would you as a parent take that risk with your kids life?

6.Even getting passed that it is hard to believe that the car would still be working perfectly after the fall & she can simply drive off again -the film needed a better ending.

So all in all, not the best movie ever made but far from being the worst I have seen. No, that accolade is still held by the film 'Five Across the Eyes', check it out, then you will see what a truly dreadful movie looks like!

score 5/10

nisabine 25 November 2017

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3867614/