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This school-reunion paintball outing struggles to live up to illustrious Brit comedy-horror predecessors like Hot Fuzz and Dog Soldiers
This scruffy British-made comedy-horror, helmed by debut director Darren Berry, features a large ensemble cast with an extremely wide range of acting skills. Sadly, just as the story itself turns on how each individual’s flaws endanger the whole team, the same goes for the movie itself: thudding line readings and embarrassing bursts of overacting sully the better work on display. But maybe it’s a fool’s errand to expect much better from a film about a team of paintballers, all friends from a secondary school who graduated in 2004, being murdered one by one in comically grotesque ways in a tatty woodland area near a quarry.
The makers have cited British comedy-horror features Hot Fuzz and Dog Soldiers as touchstones. Knowing that at least serves to help viewers appreciate how deftly the writer-directors of those earlier films, Edgar Wright and Neil Marshall, balance comic timing and tension-building, while coaxing good performances. But even they might have struggled with mayhem on a paintball course, a daft premise that isn’t exploited as well as it might have been – given how innately silly this mock military pastime is, one so beloved of middle-management types and macho-minded suburbanites. Continue reading...