JustinDGBZ
Watched
Posts : 202
Current Win Points : 95
Join date : 2013-05-28
Age : 31
 | Subject: American Blackout  Wed Oct 30, 2013 12:42 am | |
| This TV movie from National Geographic came on earlier tonight and I watched most of it (I missed some of the beginning) but I thought it was pretty good! In the movie the United States is hit with a cyber attack that knocks out power for ten days before eventually the problem is solved and power is turned back on. The film is viewed through five different cameras from a variety of people in "found-footage" style, which some of you may like since Slender series usually go through with this format. At first I didn't think the idea was very possible, and a lot of it still didn't make sense to me (if the power is out why is the president making speeches on television and how is the news still showing?) but as it went on I found that the situations going on could be very real. There were a few questions I still had but most of them were answered, although I suppose the answers don't really matter anyways. There are five groups of people it follows: A prepper family who has prepared for such a disaster, a typical family that consists of a dad and a pregnant mom with their young daughter, a group of college students stuck in an elevator, a wealthy couple, and a teen vlogger whose mother goes missing. - A Summary and My Thoughts:
Overall I thought it was good and I was glad to see the fates of the groups, except for one in particular who I was curious to know about what happened but it probably wouldn't have been realistic finding out their fate. I did expect there to be more harm done, as there was a lot of danger that happened (the situation in general was dangerous), but I'm glad that all of the groups but one had a happy ending.
The Preppers: The dad is the ringleader with wife and his young son (who is the one filming) and teenage daughter, and they take her boyfriend in onto their Colorado compound, where they're relatively safe most of the time with supplies they've stored. I think it was in the first few days their neighbor came to their farm and started asking for food and supplies, and the dad says no while the boyfriend tries to convince him otherwise. The boy is put on nightwatch at around 1 in the morning (which isn't a good idea) and he catches the boyfriend giving the neighbors some food. Later on the neighbors come with guns and force the boy to show them where the food is while everyone else is sleeping and after they leave he wakes them up, and the dad sends everyone into a bunker. They stay in the bunker and the dad catches on camera the neighbors returning so he goes to confront them but is held at knifepoint, so the boyfriend takes an AK and threatens to shoot them, and right before anyone can get hurt the power comes back on and he gets a cellphone call from his mom, so everyone stops aiming at each other and go in their separate directions... it was a tense moment and I was waiting for the boyfriend to start shooting up everyone and kicking ass but it was well played and everyone got out of the situation safely, kinda reminded me of the movie The Purge though.
The Family: I think I missed a lot of the stuff going on with them, but the daughter is filming with her flip camera or w/e it's called and they stay in their house much of the time. I think I started paying attention to them around the time the mother started going into labor so they tried going to the hospital but get into a car wreck; amazingly everyone in the family is fine and they get out, she's set against a tree and gives birth and the baby boy is fine. They start running out of food in the days afterwards so the dad goes to search for some, but while he's gone the house catches on fire. They escape and go to a Red Cross camp, where they set up a missing person's poster but then find one the dad made looking for them. Near the end there's a small riot whenever a water delivery arrives and the daughter drops her camera in the chaos; the mom gets frantic and starts looking for her but finds out she saw her dad and literally dropped everything she was doing to go run to him, so the family gets a happy ending... wasn't too many exciting parts for them IMO but I was worried about someone getting killed although they get incredibly lucky throughout it and no one gets harmed, so at least it did a good job in its suspense.
Elevator Group: This group I probably had the biggest problem with in my suspension of disbelief. I caught them in the elevator on day three, but they're all college students and one of them injured his arm somehow. They spend a long time in that elevator with little food and supplies, and then climb out of it using whatever shit they have to make a harness (shoe laces, belts, backpack straps) to get to the top of the shaft and poke out a plastic cover with a pocket knife that leads to the roof. So they get onto the roof and are looking around like "there's no one on the ground and the power is out ,WAI?!" and don't seem to wonder before hand that something was wrong because I'm sure someone in 3 days would help them out of the elevator if everything was normal and wouldn't just leave them there. The door to the stairs is locked, somehow they get injured-arm guy onto the roof but he dies from his injuries, they drink rainwater and eat pidgeons, then the power comes back on and they're like "YAY!"... so yeah, not very exciting, and they were kinda idiots.
The Couple: I think I missed much of what this group did the most, but this had the most interesting moments besides the vlogger IMO. They mostly sit around in their expensive apartment and wait it out at the beginning from what I saw but they go out to get food, the boyfriend gets impatient at a place that is giving out supplies and argues with people like an idiot. He manages to get a can of peaches from a store on another day and some guy with a crowbar tries to rob them but he beats the shit out of him with the can of peaches, which was a badass moment. But then they realize they don't have a can opener and he tries to open it with a knife, stabbing his hand in the process, and the next night the apartment they're at gets robbed by looters. Somehow, from what I understand, the guy bled to death in his bed so he was unable to protect his girlfriend when the looters broke in, and when they do that she drops her camera and they drag her away, and that's it for them... I wanted to know what happened to her, and that ending was unfortunate, but I think Nat Geo was trying to make them look like some sort of rich spoiled people who were unprepared and expected to have everything handed to them.
The Vlogger: This was probably my favorite character out of everyone, because here you have a teenaged guy who knows how to film stuff and is prepared to do so. He only lives with his mom, who at the start of the blackout goes to the hospital she works at as a nurse, and the whole time he's looking for her and trying to find out where she is. In between talking to the camera at his home, he goes outside every day and records what is going on, which much of the time is seriously dangerous situations, such as a riot in Central Park and getting stuck outside after curfew with both being separate occasions; the riot showed that on the streets the police and army are not safe to be around, as they were trying to maintain the crowds of people but seemed to be indiscriminately shooting at them and hitting them with melee weapons, and around the time of him being stuck outside after curfew he manages to find a magnum revolver in his mom's closet (which is a pretty funny moment when he's showing it off to his camera) and I'm sure if the police found him with that he'd be dead. I think the night before that he found a parking garage that was lined with body bags that had biohazard signs on them, which was a creepy moment. At the end, he starts hearing sounds coming from his basement, which seems like someone broke in and is rustling around down there, so he goes with his gun and finds out it's his washing machine since the power was turn back on; he turns around after discovering this to find his mom in the doorway and he gets a happy ending which was pretty awesome IMO.
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