Watch Hell For Free

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

If you know a bit about German cinema, you will agree that the 5-year-old "Hell" is not really a film you'd expect to come from Germany. Science-fiction is a rarity in the German-speaking countries, horror and thriller not so much though. The bravery to take on new areas, however, is the only thumbs-up I can give writer and director Tim Fehlbaum here. This is his second full feature film and easily his most known work so far. Eidinger, Herzsprung, Winkler and Erceg are somewhat known in Germany at least and this may be the reason why. It certainly is not the quality of this film. I always thought Hannah Herzsprung was a pretty weak actress, mediocre at best, but sometimes downright bad. Neither the script nor the co-stars are helping much in this post-apocalyptic drama. This is especially disappointing as the setting offers the possibility of a truly atmospheric film. It was not achieved. In the end, I can only say that i am glad the movie does not run for 90 minutes even and if you cut 6-7 minutes of credits, it's really short. This does not have to be negative. It means a film is more essential like that and there is an uncountable number of really good films out there which are very much helped by a low runtime. This is not one of them sadly. The acting, the story and the overall outcome are all fairly underwhelming. Thumbs down and I do not recommend the watch. No idea why this movie scored so much awards attention, even at really prestigious ceremonies like the German Film Awards. I guess, for some people being different means being good. But for you it shouldn't Only worth a watch if you really love the genre. Or then you may be even more disappointed. Better stay away.

I expected much more from a project that included Roland Emmerich-especially since he has been involved with such amazing movies like 2012, The Day After Tomorrow etc. I think that a daytime high of somewhere around 160 F would only spur the German's on to come up with ways of dealing with the situation rather than causing their entire society to implode into something resembling a giant junkyard. I would have thought that such a scenario would have been the perfect opportunity to use a soundtrack in a Tangerine Dream Sorcerer vein but there was nothing resembling a soundtrack unless you consider the obligatory inclusion of the only German top 40 song ever to be on the top 40 in the west: "99 Luft Balloons" which appears in the form of it being the CD of choice for a girl of about 14 in the film. Being kidnapped by cannibals as the focal point of the plot in a movie with this kind of scope is a serious anticlimax. Aside from the washed out with light approach to depicting the day side of 'a world gone to heat hell' there is little else in the way of anything special visually in this movie. It is really more of a cinematic burp than a movie. it comes in at under 90 minutes which I think defines a half effort rather than a full effort. The acting is OK-but given that the entire film takes place in something like three square km's of nothing, acting skills can't brighten up this dull dull dull script.

Check on any review of the German film 'Hell' and it'll tell you that it's a film 'of two halves.' I can't really add much to that.Set in the near future when the sun has scorched the Earth, leaving only a few survivors to scour the land for what they need most - in this case, water. We meet four of them as they travel across Germany, unable to set foot in the sunlight and doing much of the travelling at night, as they desperately look for the fabled mountain range where it still rains.The first half is pretty good. It takes the whole 'can't go out in the sunlight' idea and introduces many nice touches, i.e. how the characters have developed new patterns of living, plus how they ingeniously find various ways of getting more water (out of pipes, using cloths to soak moisture off cave walls and so on). Plus the acting is good. Everyone plays their part well and there isn't a Jar-Jar Binks among them (in other words, hideously annoying and unbearable to watch).However, the second half kind of slips up on itself and turns the whole thing into a simple 'escape from the baddies' movie. It even comes complete with 'running through the woods' scene. Plus the idea of being unable to go out in the sunlight kind of gets forgotten about. The sunlight suddenly plays no real part in the second act, even to the extent that the characters are somehow able to run about it in with no real side effects.What starts off excellent, just ends up being okay-ish. It's definitely worth watching, even if it's just for the nice atmosphere created and decent first half. If you fancy a German subtitled version of The Road, give it a try.http://thewrongtreemoviereviews.blogspot.co.uk/

As I sat through this thing, I couldn't help but be reminded of some of the lousy attempts at post-apocalyptic dreck from the 80s such as "R.O.T.O.R." and "Robot Holocaust". While the direction and performances were passable (I guess), the obvious attempts to mask the film's paltry budget via camera tricks, set choices and weak effects were just too much. To wit:1. Purposefully washing out shots in order to make it appear as if the sun was beating down on the earth 2. Unnecessary/uncomfortable close-ups designed to prevent the viewer from seeing what little actual set and props they could afford 3. Jerky camera work designed to prevent any part of the lackluster setting from remaining in focus for any appreciable period of time 4. Choosing a German mountain forest which had obviously been ravaged by fire and/or beetle kill in order to convey a lifeless landscape 5. Blocking out the windows of the car in order to prevent the viewer from seeing (again) what little actual set and props they could afford6. Depicting exactly zero on-screen gore, even though this film's supposed "shock value" was rooted in cannibalism ...and so on.This film was riddled with logic holes - far too many to enumerate here - and the ending was awful to an eye-rolling degree, making no sense whatsoever.