I was fairly happy with this movie up until a certain tipping point in the third act. The set-up goes well. We get a sense of the contempt he has for his family. There’s a problem with this, but it didn’t become clear until later. All we get exposed to are the things that bother him. It would help if we had a sense that he actually loves his family.
At the core, the movie is about the pressure that patriarchs face to keep their households in order and provided for. By losing his job, he hasn’t just failed at providing; he’s failed at everything. That’s where one of the problems is - by making the family only represented with the worst traits, it takes away from the core part of the story, and pushes it into the same territory as something like The Stepfather.
I liked most of the movie, but there was a point… around the time that the father gets injured and captured by the kids… that the story seemed to be abandoning most of the heart. It no longer mattered that this was their father. It could have just as easily been a nameless maniac.
Technically, the movie is okay. There are lighting issues all over the place, and it’s more obvious because they were shooting on a digital camera. Most of the early footage is really solidly done. Once they get out into the country, some of the interior shots are grainy because there isn’t enough light. Some outdoor shots are grainy for the same reason. A lot of the forest shots at night are lit in a weird way. They seem to be strongly lit from one angle. It doesn’t look right.
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