+1 (2013)

Why so much hype?

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

"+1" is the kind of a movie where you have just got to be sold on the premise. That being that some manner of mysterious asteroid has struck our earth and is producing sinister doppelgangers of everyone in the immediate vicinity of it's crash site. Therein lies the foundation for this exceedingly odd yet mildly engrossing and mostly worth the while story (say, 2 3/4 out of 5 stars) written and directed by Dennis Iliadis, whose previous project was the 2009 remake of "The Last House on the Left".The plot revolves in and around a completely hedonistic pagan ritual of a college bash thrown by a rich kid in his folks mansion while the parental units are away. David (Rhys Wakefield) has just fallen out of favor with his girlfriend (Ashley Hinshaw) of two years (this courtship time period is reiterated several times in the flick for no apparent purpose) and is on a mission to patch things up at this swingin' soiree. The mission proves to be easier said than done, however, as body duplicates and time dimensions get as screwy and scrambled up as the alcohol and drug-addled brains of the preponderance of partiers.And just as we come to believe that it's ostensibly a case of all's well that ends well (well, mostly), we get this glimpse of a final image that seems to be telling us, "Hey. Not so fast there, bub." And here we go again...

This movie is only 3 stars for me because it has tried something new and other than that it is just a waste of time, so I am giving 3 stars only for trying something new..There are many mistakes in this movie which I will not even go into details, especially logic mistakes.Dennis Iliadis has tried something different but hasn't been able to deliver something satisfactory..This movie made me curious at the beginning as it promised some space action with some good looking girls and a mystery around all but as the movie went on I became more and more disappointed...

It seems that most people that watch this film misunderstand it. The duplicate characters are not aliens or doppelgangers, they are exact copies of the primary characters, only shifted in time. This plot tool allows the story to explore a couple of different and very interesting ideas. The broad exploration is a philosophical one which delves into the nature of humanity in regard to people's reactions in an unknown situation. These reactions range from fear-induced ultra-violence to harmonious contentment. The other idea that is explored is on a more personal note. What if we were given the opportunity to change a mistake that we made and that we regret with all of our being? Would we let our fear rule us or would we be able to seize that opportunity and forge the destiny that we desire for ourselves?

A few reviewers have said that there's a good premise in this movie. I'm inclined to disagree.Basically there's a party and some identical clones show up. For some reason the clones are delayed in time - that is they do the things the originals were doing about fifteen minutes previously. Every now and then the mains power flickers on and off, there's a little bit of dubstep music, and the clones catch up a few minutes on the time delay. Finally the delay disappears entirely and the clones seem to merge with the originals.It's not a good idea for a movie. It's just weird.Maybe if the creators went for a surrealistic, intellectual art vibe it could have worked. Unfortunately it feels pretty moronic.This movie does have a lot of genuinely young-looking actors in it however. There's no thirty-somethings pretending to be teens here. Kind of refreshing for a change.I can't think of anything else to say. Boring. Needed some actual horror. The creators should have sat down and watched a couple of classics for inspiration. If they had just copied a few ideas from "Invasion of the body snatchers" no one would have complained. There's too much pointless melodrama going on here. The lead male is also a detestable loser.