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One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

RANCID is a tiny budget indie thriller from South Africa. The plot has tinges of science ficiton here and there and involves four people who sign up for medical experiments but get more than they bargained for. It's an old story with the usual setting of a remote installation with little in the way of set-up or explanation, just a great deal of characters creeping around in the dark. I found it all quite dull.

I did a small amount of research into this film before watching to make sure I wasn't wasting my time and found a lot of positive comments about it. I do understand it was made on a tight budget. At first I was engaged and interested but quickly began to lose interest. Firstly, the time stamp on the CCTV footage was always the same. I found that extremely distracting and something that should have been picked up and corrected.Then there was the mistreatment of one of the 'participants' near the start. Something that could skew their results of the experiment. The scientist in me was dubious that the company would go to that much expense and then employ such incompetent security.There was no explanation of why some of the previous 'participants' were still roaming around the test area in an unstable and dangerous state. There were perfect opportunities to do so using the voice over CCTV footage. I could think of several ways to cover this.The pacing slowed way the hell down when it was supposed to be ramping up. They characters seemed to run around in a circle. There was no progression. They never tried to plan and act to move the plot along.There were a few other glaring inconsistencies that had nothing to do with budget - more to do with poor scripting. The less money you have the cleverer you need to be with the dialogue.Acting was pretty good, as was wardrobe and equipment (no plastic guns). The zombies were very believable and make-up was excellent.Give it a bash if you're bored. It gets a 'could have been better' from me.

Don't watch this film if you're expecting a high budget Hollywood film. This movie was made for very little and is a fine example of what can be done on a micro budget. Give it a shot with what can be done with very little. Some inventive directing covers an interesting little story. The camera style on the budget is pretty admirable and I would like to see what could be done from these guys on a bigger budget. The story takes an interesting look at 4 applicants that sign up for a a bizarre medical test that has dire consequences. The zombies are dealt with in a unique way and the explanation to the test has a cool reveal. Give it a shot - but it is very, very low budget.

The story focuses on a group of participants who sign up for a mysterious medical treatment that promises to cure all their ailments. After taking a sedative, they wake up and they are all cured, but like all things in horror films, when something is too good to be true for the characters, it generally is.The film uses stylish cinematography (The fact that this was shot on a consumer stills camera baffles me) and gritty surveillance footage to weave a tale of strange government testing.What Alastair Orr and his production team has done here on this budget is nothing short of amazing. This does not look like a film that was made for R500k (That's less than $70K). It looks absolutely amazing. The acting is generally pretty decent, the make-up is great. The script kind of loses itself a bit but the general concept holds strong.This is not your typical South African film and its great to see filmmakers having the balls, even if they don't have the budget, to do something a little different in a country that only supports crappy Afrikaans films that would be laughed off the international stage.