Salvage (2008)

Dystopic/anti-government films never get old for me. I love to see films that look into our near future and try to predict what our reactions to very real threats just might be. 28 days later, the Road Warrior, Carriers, they all try to show humanity as it falls apart and how some will pull together to survive. Salvage started out strong and may have reached my list of favorite apocalyptic films but sadly it just didn’t have the script to finish strong.

Salvage is about a residential neighborhood in England that comes under lockdown by black op government soldiers. There’s something in the neighborhood that’s killing the residents and one mother must stop at nothing to find her daughter and bring her to safety.

What starts as a strong drama about a divorced family with a child in the middle turns into a great survivalist thrill ride but devolves into a pointless monster film that’s short on scares. This film is a crime. How can a movie start out so strong, get me invested in the characters and in the plot and then lose it in the last 20 minutes? Once again a modestly budgeted film utilizing great actors, a great director and editor get screwed because the script was no good. There was so much to investigate in this film, the first 2/3 were rich in character development and humanity and then it just turns into a cheesy stalk and slash monster flick and loses all its intelligence and power. I mean how can an unarmed woman survive against some super killing machine  when special ops soldiers with GUNS get killed? Add that to many other poor plot choices and what you have is a 75 minute film where the last 15 minutes are rubbish. Honestly, even given the short run time I felt the film was too long. I’m so frustrated because I really wanted to like this film but the ending is so poorly constructed, I just couldn’t.

Gore: mild

Nudity: mild

Overall: 4/10

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iE6pXg6xMpM