Instinct - a review

I posted this review of a machinima movie also on machinima(dot)com. At the bottom of this post you can watch the movie.
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Running Time: 21:05

Director: Throwaxe

Medium: The Movies

This short machinima movie has recently been nominated for the Machinima Festival Europe 07, reason enough to review the movie. Off course with a short movie it's no use to review the story in depth. The basic premise: Jeff wakes up aboard a space ship, with total loss of memory. He is not the only one to suffer amnesia, everybody aboard the ship, even the ships computer suffers from it. Soon the crew realizes that they are not alone on board. A predator stalks them, killing crewmembers one at a time.

From a technical point of view the movie is well made, no wonder its director got the director nomination at the festival. With a few sets he manages to convey the entire story and even includes a nice plot twist. The voice acting is good. I did have the feeling that not all voices matched their characters, but that's the nature of machinima.

Despite being well made, I could not shake off the feeling that the story was underdeveloped. Sure the story is good and the director/writer added his own touches. Yet however original the story was, there were some moments when I had serious questions on the actions of the characters. When a crew member screams through the intercom when being butchered, the remaining crew does not run, but walk to the murder scene. This seems a bit odd. I know there are limitations to The Movies, but there are running animations that could have been used.

The most annoying story error came just after the plot twist. I won't reveal the twist, but let me say that as the main character gets the news he acts completely unbelievable while clearly being in danger.

Watching this movie, it felt like a feature length movie squeezed into 20 minutes running time. If the director/writer would have spend a bit more time on the story development, character development and adding another 20 to 30 minutes to the story, he would have had an even better movie.

My final conclusion: A must see movie, only too bad the story is too short.

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Double click the movie to watch it in full screen