SICK BOY

CONTAINS SPOILERS, BUT ANNOYANCE MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE

Note to filmmakers. Please, please, please spend a little money on having your film graded so it doesn't look like your video camera was straight out of the box. I know budgets are tight but if you're going to charge people to view your work then it should look at least slightly better than it would if I'd been your cinematographer. I'm not expecting quickie horror movies to look like they were shot on 70mm by the greatest DP who ever walked the Earth but when they not only have the production values of homemade gonzo pornography but the visual feel as well, the rest of the movie - acting, writing, directing and so on - needs to be apocalyptically good to make up for it looking like it was filmed by your mum. Sadly, I guess it goes without saying that the acting, writing, directing etc. on Sick Boy are so far away from "apocalyptically good" that the line between them can be seen from space.

Skye McCole Bartusiak is hired as a phenomenally expensive babysitter ($400 a night) for an unseen and very ill child, with strict instructions Not To Go Downstairs And Certainly Not To Try And Open The Padlocked Room In The Basement Under Any Circumstances Whatsoever. Unfortunately, she's probably the biggest moron ever to walk the Earth, who has apparently made it her life's mission to make the stupidest possible decision in any given situation. To wait until she's spent $15,000 on dental training before deciding to throw in her new job as a dental nurse. To not call the police upon finding a dead body. And to go downstairs for absolutely no reason at all....

Sick Boy wastes time: it takes over twenty minutes to even get her to the house when literally everything that happens up to that point could have been dealt with in half a dozen lines of dialogue, and the whole film only lasts for eighty minutes. In the last ten minutes we finally get some gore but it's way too late to salvage the movie. Rubbish, and not just rubbish but boring rubbish, stupid rubbish, and visually ugly rubbish.

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