Shortwave (2016) Online

A sci-fi thriller with a 6.5 rating...it sounded awesome. I persisted. And persisted. Annnnnd persisted.

What a waste of 90 minutes of life.

Spare yourself the pain.

Cannot remember any movie where I just fell asleep without being tired. This movie builds up so slowly that it really is a cure for sleeplessness! Honestly, if you have sleeping problems just watch this movie. Acting is also terrible. It missed everything but the main reason why I rate this movie 1 star is because those behind this movie tried to put some kind of emotion into it by putting a lot of attention into certain scenes but actually got the opposite. A shameful and laughable approach to a situation that is very serious when it happens to anyone in real life. Makers of this movie, do something else!

The main thing this film seems to me to be is a vehicle for the director to show his liking for Juanita Ringeling. Some of her scenes could be outtakes from a Calvin Klein underwear commercial.

She can act decent enough, but there's really no need to see her in her pants quite so much.

The male actors were not great in this. The husband was annoying: he is studying the phenomenon concerned but still doesn't believe his own wife when she says she's affected by it???? Idiotic.

Effects are decent. It's shot beautifully. But it's a pretty weak attempt at a not too bad film idea.

You could take or leave this sci-fi/horror film very easily. But I guess it's a way to while away an empty couple of hours that's not too offensive. Do yourself a favour though and watch William Eubank's 'The Signal' instead.

Plot Spoiler: In the opening scene Isabel's (Juanita Ringeling) child is taken in an odd abduction case. Two years later after an attempted suicide, Isabel and her husband Josh (Cristobal Tapia Montt) live in an isolated fortress home. Josh is conducting a shortwave experiment with Thomas (Kyle Davis) attempting to contact aliens through hidden signals within the waves. Isabel hears and sees things related to the experiment. Things don't go as planned.

There seemed to be some plot continuity issues. They were talking about contacting aliens, but in reality they knew they were doing something different all along, so the conversations didn't make any sense. I still didn't figure out why the hostility either. Characters were so-so.

Guide: F-word. Solo sex. No nudity.

The most boring and pretentious film i have ever seen! A waste of mine and your time.fell asleep 4 times,nothing happens and the acting is crap.Avoid.

So the Storyline sounded very Good. But thats all. The Actors are terrible, and not B Movie like terrible.. Absolutely terrible. It started ok, but went downhill in no time. Almost nothing in this Movie is remarkable or any good.

If you want to see a Movie that puts you asleep, well this is your Movie. But if you except something like White Noise with good Actors and a mediocre Writing, stay away from this.

I have seen hundreds of Movies with an Rating @ 4 who are way better than this time stealing "insert offensive content here" Movie.

With a barely coherent and thin plot, this movie already has two strikes against it from the get go. However the direction is even worse and the attempt to be profound by the use of flashbacks and hallucinatory elements contribute to ending that makes no sense and the movie spends all 3 minutes trying to explain itself with pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo. I will not recite the plot as it is in previous reviews. I will only point out some of the things i remember that were either not explained, or made no sense and only confused the plot even more.



SPOILERS!!

1. Why does Isabelle in the flashbacks to hwer former happy life with her husband have a totally different hair style? In the flashbacks short blonde, and in the present brown long and mousy?

2. When Isabelle goes inside the bookstore dropping off her daughter to the reading group, she uses the bathroom for all for a minute, then she comes out to find her daughter missing. ABDUCTED? But wait, not only is her daughter missing, but all the other kids, the staff, the other patrons, in fact, the whole town is empty.! NOTHING is explained and then we jump to 2 years later where Isabelle is still suffering from PTS, but again no mention of where the whole town went?? 3. We never know if the entities are real or just in Isabele's mind. In some scenes she seems possessed, in others she just sits back and watches her husband die as if she has no control and the entities are separate from her.

4. The use of repetitive flashbacks that may or may not be real or imagined adds to the confusion, and the arty camera work, sometimes bright and in focus, other times compressed or even partially out of focus on the edges may be an attempt to convey states of reality or what was in Isabelle's head, but i only found it distracting.. I could go on and on, but my point is that this is a very amateurish film that "looks" like it is much more than it turns out to be.

I guarantee that anyone with a brain will be scratching their heads at the end of this one.

NOTE: A nice little horror/syfy movie I just saw with a good twist that is very low budget but at least makes sense when the plot reveal is told is "STEPHENIE"

It is the kind of movie that seems to start off normal, and than little by little things just get weird until we find out the truth. I didn't guess what the reality was until near the end, some may get it sooner. It is bit like "Sixth Sense" but I wouildn't put it in that class. Still, check it out, but don't read the reviews it you don't want to spoil the twist.

Honestly, the first 10 minutes of this were interesting and then it all went downhill from there. The actors were trying their best but the writing was complete garbage and it honestly seemed like the majority of this film was centered around getting the female lead into as many skimpy outfits as possible. Combine all this with completely unnecessary and not plot relevant sexual scenes and I think I can figure out what the Directors true motivation was.

If you want horror, you won't find it here. If you want 'thought provoking' you won't find that either. However, if you LOVE pretentious films? You'll absolutely love this film. Worst thing I ever saw.

...that would likely have worked better as an extended short, this tyro effort by a bunch of people you've never heard of probably played a lot better in the writer/director's head than it does in the finished product. At times deadly dull, and other times messily incomprehensible, "Shortwave" has something to do with communicating with aliens who seemingly turn out to be violently disinterested in being bothered. The leading lady is attractive, one must grant, but eye-candy can't carry an ill-told story, especially when it's all tease and no delivery. The opening scene is cleverly executed, but once it's over, the film slowly sinks into the mire of its own artsy pretensions of mystery, all of which remain virtually inexplicable. Things occur that go nowhere. Hints are dropped and never picked up again. It all ends in a spate of death, furiously signifying nothing. I gave it an extra point or two for some nice DP work, but really, it's not worth the effort to seek it out or the time to watch it.

Thanks to Shortwave I think we have a new definition for the word "boring", if not "extremely boring". First of all I am a fan of sci-fi movies. There is always alot of potential in that genre of movies because almost everything is permitted, even the craziest stories, but it has to be a good entertaining story. And that's the major problem with this movie, it is everything but entertaining. The story is boring and incredibly slow. The acting is a disaster, especially from Juanita Ringeling. She's so annoying to watch that it is difficult to do worse than her. I don't know if it was the director's orders but apparently the main thing she does is walk very slowly and caress all kind of random objects, like a tree, a bamboo stick, a door, a kitchen counter, her private parts and so on. I really struggled to stay awake and I was not even tired. How this movie got those ratings on here is just a mystery to me.

This is a slow, drawn out movie that combines essence of "The Outer Limits" weirdness to a very slow and painfully drawn out conclusion of what seemed to be an intriguing plot. You learn very early about why Isabel and Josh have moved out to a location in the middle of nowhere, and the fact Josh is involved in a science project, but that's about all you know about for 25 minutes as the movie drags on and reminds you of these facts over and over again. The music does not help. The ambient backing track is hypnotic in places, and with the slow pace of the movie you'll be forgiven for falling asleep in places. I began to start skipping 10 seconds here, and 20 seconds there waiting for something to new happen.

The acting was OK, and there was a needless scene of Juanita Ringeling masturbating (there you go skip to 22 minutes in and enjoy). This is not a spoiler as it has very little relevance to the plot if any. The movie did not need it, but I suppose its one way to keep viewers from switching off at this point. I'm sure the writers will give you plenty of excuses for it being in the movie.

On the whole the movie was painfully slow, the writers struggled to make the plot stretch for 80 minutes. I had to turn on subtitles on halfway through because the actors were talking / shouting over each other and areas that were scary were only made so because of the very loud sound effects, otherwise, nothing makes you jump. How can I get these 80 minutes of my life back?

Shortwave (2016) is on parallel with other amateur movies such as Primer (2004) and Coherence (2013). I am mentioning these two specific movies simply because this could be the 3rd big meme for that matter. Plus, it is better than either of those.

This film is less tedious and doesn't follow the basic "it's deep and I am smart for liking it" type of rating process quite yet, but I recommend giving it a go if you have better taste than reddit. For others, feel free to read my review few years after its original post date after seeing it on reddit/imgur under the caption "mindf#ck indie movies which you should watch" right between Primer and Coherence. Mark my words.

Belles images, jolie fille, mais histoire tordue mélangeant les genres, inspirée d'autres films.

I am a fan of sci-fi movies combined with a little terror or horror, but this one it's just too slow and makes no sense. It's like new directors only know how to scare people by using very sharp sounds and music but no drama, no story or lines. I can't believe a movie like this which had all the potential to be incredible, it's a >6 on punctuation.

This is not a bad effort for the budget it had. It keeps moving along nicely and kept me entertained most of the way. Juanita Ringeling acted the lead role very well, and was quite likable and charming in that I did not mind going all the way with her through the movie, even in her most gruesome scenes. The movie may have tried to do to much what it had at its disposal, but still I would recommend to watch.

This seems exactly like a student film trying to pass as a full length film just to serve as some guys' thesis work. The core idea behind it is actually cool, and if this movie was given the proper hard work and love it needed, it could've been something genuinely worth watching.

As it stands, it is simply a soft sci-fi short film that has been padded with an inexcusably large number of meaningless montages. You get a little bit of story, then a bunch of shots of the lead actress in her underwear, or some blurry flashbacks that contribute nothing to the story. It has some good shots, the acting is passable, but the audio design is glaringly bad. You should never be questioning the music choice while watching a movie, but they seem to have had no idea how to enhance the mood of a scene using an apropos soundtrack.

This movie just makes me sad, not because of the story, but because it is just full of wasted potential. Actors who seemed to really be trying, a story that really could have entertained and added something new to the genre, cinematography that was visually appealing but totally out of place. I hope the director of this film learns from it, and next time tries to put everything he can into making the movie a high quality production. A low budget is no excuse! With a good idea, good music choice, decent actors and careful cinematography, even a low budget film like this could be a great watch. Sadly, this didn't meet the criteria of something I would call entertaining.

Mindbender of a film. The only detrimental things were a few actors just not being up to snuff, Thomas mainly, and a few plot beats.

I knew there was something strange about that abduction. Everyone in the reading group at the library just disappeared and the street was empty as well. WTF?​ Don't know how that was pulled off.​ That was some foul sh¡t on Thomas' part for what he did to Josh and Isabel just for research, using a mother's grief over the loss of her child (which he had something to do with) in order to contact beings that didn't want to be bothered in the first place. ​No wonder he didn't care about what Isabel was going through in the beginning of the movie. ​He got what he deserved!

The tries hard to be "deep" and "thought provoking", but comes across as an embarrassing mess. The half-blurry cinematography was atrocious. The acting was uninspired and wooden. The most disturbing part was the amazingly bad wig the girl wears in her flashbacks.

More than 1 hour of the movie dont tell anything, is just like a house video of spinning records, seen a model doing nonsense things on a bikini, non sense scenes, false dialogues, bad performance, 10 mins could be more than enough to tell same thing, i mean nothing. total waste of time.