So, the chapter ended at 13 pages. 3812 words long.

So what happens?

Well, the hero is woken in the middle of the night ot find his girlfriend is very sick. He runs to seek help and it’s revealed that she had been poisoned.

Yay, it’s monday and I actually had an opportunity to work on my book

chapter 98 is only 8 pages 2163 words so far, but it needs a lot of work.

11 pages 2929 words.

I think I’m aiming for a total of somewhere between 130 and 150 chapters. In the end we’ll see how long the story takes to tell.

So far it’s 8 pages. 2231 words long.

Having set the basic plot for the book in the first four chapters (Of part three) Chapter 97 has the hero and his girlfriend return to their village where they are greeted and fed before turnng in for the night.  This might sound like a boring chapter, and for that reason I would prefer it stay a brief chapter, but there are some important things happening here. There’s a power play being made which won’t be discovered for a couple of chapters (possibly next chapter.)

Normally in my movie reviews I like to give my overall impression of the movie and then list the things I didn’t like. This movie was so awful I think it will save time if I list what was good about it instead.

****

****

****

****

****

****

****

I got nothing.

So, What didn’t i like about it?

Well lets start with the dialogue. Although the writer did seem to be able to give the seven characters slightly differing mannerisms, he gave them all virtually identical speech patterns. It feels like the writer chose oil-workers specially because it’s easy to imagine oil workers as tough guys. What we got was tough, foul mouthed non-entities. Seriously they’re getting killed off left and right and I can’t say I had any real empathy for any of them.

Then there’s the language. Now I have no problem with a little bit of swearing. It can emphasis the seriousness of what’s happening. Having all characters swearing constantly just because one of them stubs his toe or drops his hat though defeats the impact that such words should have on the scene.

Then there are the wolves. They seem to have chosen the darkest blackest woves they could for this movie. These are supernatural wolves. They aren’t scared of fire, they attack people even when there are plenty of corpses to go for. I’m sorry, I may not know a lot about wolves, but I’m pretty certain they don’t attack healthy people when there are suitable easier alternatives unless they feel threatened. I can understand them attacking if you invaded their den and threatened their young, for example – otherwise forget it.

There’s also a scene where they pass a part of the forest that has recently been logged. Obviously that logged area is between when the ‘Heroes’ begin and where the wolf den is located (we find the wolf den later) so the wolves have no excuse to be attacking people so far afield.

The close ups of the wolves should have been outsourced to Gerry Anderson, he could have made them more realistic. Seriously this feels like a cut budget movie in more ways than one

Shakey cam – There wasn’t a lot of it admittedly. But we seem to suffer from shakey cam during every wolf encounter. It’s so bad that you can’t even begin to guess what is being shown. I remember asking my wife after the first attack, ‘so what happened.’ She replied, ‘they chased it off.’ – ‘Chased what off,’ I asked. Presumably it was a wolf that had been staring Liam down moments before, but the picture was such a mess that there was truly no way to be sure.

Pathos – It was quite pathetic, spending far too long on scenes where they were all sat round a camp fire talking about what was waiting for them when they got home. It followed the old trope of as soon as you know what the person has to live for, clearly they aren’t going to make it. Unfortunately every character had at least one of these melancholic scenes.

Another trope this falls into is the one where a group of survivors is slowly whittled down by some mysterious evil. When Alien and Deliverance did it, it was a relatively new idea and therefore quite fresh. Thirty/forty years later it’s been done to death, it had gone stale and it stank the house out.

I have to wonder why an actor of the calibre of Liam Neeson ever agreed to appear in such a dog (no pun intended.) I can only assume he needed the work. I know what’s in it for the studio. They have a movie on their hands which they know can’t be saved by rewriting it or even by employing a decent actor, but at least if they get a decent actor people might be willing to go and see it for that actor. I hate to say it but I fell into this trap myself, I doubt I’d’ve bothered to watch it if Liam haven’t been in it

The final nail in the coffin. The movie ends just as the last survivor of the group is attacked by wolves. A rather predictable ending to a very predictable movie

★★★★★ (that’s zero not 5)

Renaissance added to music favourites