Watch The Taking For Free

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Blistering performances.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

While wrong-turn backwoods horrors are a-dime-a-dozen, this film explores something more than mere murder and mayhem. The creepy grand matriarch of a motley band of misfits has some metaphysical mojo and a yin for your yang, making a powerplay for your very soul. You float in a wooded bardo, the naked expanse between an unrelenting sun shining into every hidden corner of your psyche with incisive intensity and a dark moon which threatens to swallow you whole. In three days, you are to be sacrificed, but first your very being will be pared down using the sharp edge of your own fears and desires, layer by layer, to your innermost core. Gooooood times.The film uses a slow, smoldering burn to build the existential horror of the protagonists' predicament, with flurried sights and booming, dissonant sounds a la Lars von Trier's "Antichrist." While certainly not as masterful as von Trier, the film is an encouraging and refreshing feature debut. Given the use of the anglicized version of Carl Jung as the name of a main character, the film is also reminiscent of Jesse Holland and Andy Mitton's "Yellowbrickroad," for its depiction of a spooky forest pulling double duty as a vast Jungian jungle of the collective unconscious in which the mythic archetypes of our collective psyche must be fought or fled from.This is an intelligent person's horror film, rather than the tired, skull-effingly boring formulism that typifies the vast majority of today's additions to the genre. My only critiques are (1) that the old woman's dialogue, which I'm fairly certain the audience is meant to be able to understand, is often post-processed to the point of inaudible oblivion, and (2) some of the dialogue's verbiage from other characters sounds a little pedestrian and lacking in polish, incongruent with the contextual gravity of the scenes in which it is spoken. That said, originality and departure from formulism go a helluva long way with me, as does the film's ability to provoke deep thought about dense existential subject matter. So I give it 6.5 stars out of 10.As is so often the case when a thinking person's film gets bad reviews and bad ratings, it is for no other reason than so very many people will just not get it---or rather will not expend any more thought trying to "get it" than is necessary to process the short-attention-span, re-hashed dross that relentlessly churns out of the Hollywood conveyor. (Speaking of short attention spans, those giving just 1 star in their reviews all admit they were too impatient to get beyond around the 15-minute mark.) YES, it did have a plot and well-defined, if cryptic, narrative, and YES the film had a point, a compelling one at that. So when can bad reviews on art-house films safely be ignored? When they are suspiciously rock-bottom 1-star reviews that go beyond simply, "This film wasn't my cup of tea," to the spitting of angry venom, yet with a complete lack of any specific citations of supposed failure---a petty tirade which is nothing more than a thinly disguised declaration that, "This film made me feel stupid, so I hated it." All art-house films are plagued by these. Ignore them.So, if you want gratuitous gore or torture porn with no dramatic underpinning and no existential substance, and if you want a director that will spoonfeed you neatly appointed plot points and resounding narrative resolutions, then look elsewhere, as this piece surely leaves the drooling masses wanting and wailing. If, however, you like a directorial and writing style that doesn't capitulate to formulaic demands for right-angled scene construction and all literary exposition through spoken dialogue, but instead tasks the viewer with finding meaning from the cinematic language and the consideration of mythic archetypes, then look no further.Whoops! Sorry, I've got to dumb that down for the drooling masses, don't I? Fear what you don't understand? Movie bad. Want refreshingly original filmmaking that tries something new? Movie good. Want big-budget blood, boobs, and booms? Movie bad. Want cinematic subtlety singing a sinister serenade? Pass the popcorn.

At what point does the Film School professor say to the wannabe writer- director-filmmaker, "Look, you're a nice kid and full of energy and enthusiasm, and I know being able to make films can be both lucrative and cool and so forth but, well, like any other art-form, it takes at least a modicum of creative talent. Have you thought about transferring over to the MBA program?"Sadly, we won't hear this very often these days, largely because, in their desire for funding and patronage, universities today will welcome any jock who has ever fallen in love with casting-couch porn and has the cash up front. The only possible redeeming quality this movie might possess--in fact, the only reasonable explanation this project ever got off the ground--is that it allowed yet another film-crew to earn a living, and I think that is exactly what *real* producers these days, between *real* projects, have in mind when they allow such a tragedy of a film to actually make it to the editing suite.Play this movie while napping or out shopping to make the burglars think you're awake/at home. If you could somehow roll it up and shred it, you couldn't find a better use for it than lining Felix's litter box.

This movie was amazingly awful. I watched the whole thing in shock wondering "why." Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. AWFUL... I didn't understand any of it from beginning to end. I feel cheated out of my time. I love horror movies and I've never in my life seen one like this before. Flashes of confusion, half of the time u can't tell who did what to whom. Who's idea was this? Who believed this would make it? Don't waste your time or money on this film. These people need lots more practice before trying this again. My rating is inaccurate because there's no negative options (like -10). Long story short- this film will frustrate and confuse you and eventually upset you...

This is a waste of time, I would be ashamed if I had anything to do with this movie. It borders and then surpasses cheap ridiculous rubbish that isn't worth the time of day. I lasted 8 minutes, the Sound Technician needs to be beaten with a very large stick and the director needs to find better things to spend his pocket money on. This is complete rubbish and not worth the 8 minutes I so generously gave it. BE WARNED THIS IS NOT A B MOVIE MORE LIKE A Y MOVIE! Why did they even bother! Don't download it, watch it or hire it, I read the reviews 8 minutes into the movie and I am completely in agreement with all the negative comments, as far as horror movies go this isn't a horror movie. My 12yr old daughter could do so much better than this with an iPhone. I wish there was a score less than 1 that I could give it. Possibly one of the worst excuses for a horror movies I have ever seen and a complete waste of time.