Survive the Night

Oh how the mighty have fallen. It's not that Frank (Bruce Willis) does that bad a role, but some of his co-actors really should look for a day job. There are two scenes in particular that will just make you laugh, even though they are not meant to. The first is a scene where Jan (Lydia Hull) is running for her life across the garden, well, that's what it's supposed to look like anyway, but instead it's a pathetic tiptoe across the lawn into the woods. The second, and really the worst scene is where Frank (Bruce Willis) is helping Rich (Chad Michael Murray) into the barn. Rich has recently received a gunshot wound to the shoulder, but apparently that has caused him to get cerebral parese as well judging by the way he walks. The subsequent scenes in the barn lacks the flair and drama of being the next house over from the assailants, there is no display of fear of getting discovered pertreyed, and it pulls the excitement level down and you loose touch with the action. Without those two scenes I would give the movie a solid 5/10, but as it stands it pulls it down to a 2/10 for me.

Paint-by-numbers and utterly predictable home-invasion like thriller has some average performances including Bruce Willis who makes his (in my own collection at last) 12th one of these direct-to-video flicks from Grindstone Entertainment and gives it his least. Not terrible and I don't mind a simplistic thriller but this one had low energy and characters making dumb decisions. Beyond that, confusingly seems like the filmmakers want to provide some sympathy of the antogonists, one a complete psychopath who killed two women in cold blood... From what I read, apparently Bruce Willis gets something like $1M a day for these movies, with no publicity obligations. Must be nice. Not terrible and I've certainly seen worse, but like most Grindstone movies, they're competently shot, feature a somewhat experienced cast (this one has Chad Michael Murray who starred in the last few "Sniper" DTV films) but apparently they bought the script from some scrapheap. **2.25/5**