OMM2024 - Night 1: Shimmer (2021)

 It's Halloween #OctoberMovieMarathon 2024!

First up: Shimmer (2021)
4/10
Not starting strong this year, but maybe this is a nice way to ease into it?

Shimmer is a thriller where a Forensics Investigator, Thea Kait, is called to a crime scene where a man has been shattered into glasslike shards. As more people start to suffer the same fate, Thea must find out what is happening and how to stop it.

All in all, mediocre and a bit dull. I did get a couple laughs, but the execution did not to justice to the potential storyline. If you enjoy the first 2 scenes that's pretty much what the rest of the movie feels like, so you might enjoy the whole thing.

Sadly, the production value just isn't there. I think there could have been more of an effort to hide the lackluster effects (different angles, showing others' reactions to what's happening instead of the thing itself, etc) as that really took any fear away. Then again, perhaps they were going for more of a character driven drama instead of a mystery-thriller? If so, they should have told the actors, since the delivery felt more like a cop comedy. Which wasn't too bad at the start, but really took away from any emotional punch the climax could have had.

And I gotta ask, why is the kid there? He's not needed for the story at all and is supposed to be in "preschool" but clearly looks 10? Why?

POSSIBLE SPOILERS START HERE!

I'm not sure if the cops were supposed to seem incompetent or if the direction was confusing. The cops initially arrive to the wife of a man who was just glassified (my term, they just say he's dead). And she valiantly tried to deliver some cryptic foreshadowing- which is immediately (and I mean .5sec after her line was done) is dismissed by the cops as "clearly out of her f**ing mind". And everyone on the cop team is almost... annoyed? at this lady being distraught that her husband JUST died mysteriously. Very rude, you'd think she called them because she threw a hat in the trash and needed them to crawl in a dumpster to get it.

Plus, later on at the station, all the cops are very loose with any sort of procedure. Which is odd when we're introduced to our leading lady as the forensics scientist trying to puzzle out this strange death. Why aren't they wearing gloves? Why is one's mask just upside down? Why are they all so nonchalant when a coworker's body is brought in cause he was shot? "Aw... he was my secret santa last year " Are we a serious forensics team? Or are we just playing around with the alien/supernatural/whatever lights just for funsies?

I actually thought for awhile that the ending twist was going to be that the lights were aliens, or were controlling one/multiple of the cops via body snatching, or that one of our characters was controlling the lights themselves...

Instead, our twist is completely focused on interpersonal drama between these barely-there characters and the killer lights aren't even involved. Imagine building up the horror of zombies coming down on your family- and then the climax is all about how Igor wasn't moonlighting and cheating on the Doctor and the Mayor is actually embezzling funds.

The focus is all over the place. There's some fun ideas, but it goes either too fast (we immediately accept the glass shards as a body no issue), are ignored (why was that one guy saying the lights were "happy"? Was he being controlled or something? 4 people are dead dude, why are you so excited?), or it comes out of nowhere (surprise roofie time I guess?).

I did enjoy our lead actress, Nicole Galicia, she really did her best TV drama slightly-cold scientist despite the stilted dialogue and strange pacing. I also enjoyed the bartender, Gillian Visco, thanks for really going all in on your one scene! But they just weren't enough to hold my attention. Maybe I was just enjoying seeing a movie without any huge stars chewing the scenery.

I can't recommend this movie. It wasn't "so bad it's good", nor was it bad enough to induce a rage watch. I can see where the character drama could have been interesting, or the mystery could have been interesting, but neither made it across the finish line. I don't think they made it halfway. Oh well, they can't all be winners.