Plot
A team of eight adrenaline junkies are
taken into a remote forest for the ultimate game of paintball in Europe's
largest paintball sanctuary. When one of their number is shot and killed by
a live round, the group suddenly realise that the stakes of their game have
just risen as a mysterious masked paintballer sets out to kill them
one-by-one.
Review
Anyone who has ever been paintballing will know that it's
not the sort of sport for everyone. Some will love it and rise to the
occasion, reveling in the chance to become a general for a day. Others will hate it and wish for the game to finish quickly. It's
the only chance that "ordinary" people will ever get to being in some sort
of combat situation. For those younger males who've grown up on Call of
Duty and the like, you'll love the chance to act it out for real.
However if you have played it before and you're not very good, you'll find
yourself being killed early on and sitting out the rest of the game,
watching the commando-wannabes crawl and sprawl across the battlefield for
hours at a time. It can be a great game to compete in but ultimately
disappointing and frustrating if you get the chance to play. Paintball
is exactly the same. It's got the potential to be a great film but it isn't
and doesn't even come close which is both unsatisfactory and frustrating.
Any successful horror film will have you care about the
characters. I mean let's face it, if you don't like someone you're not going
to be rooting for them to survive the situation. The best scripts are those
which allow the characters to get a bit of empathy from the viewer. So it's
to Paintball's detriment that this bunch of characters are so badly written
and presented that you'll not care who lives and who dies.
The closest we get to knowing
anything about them is the brief sequence on the jeep at the beginning where
each person introduces themselves by name. That's about it for
characterisation because once the paintball game gets underway, they all run
around with the same combat attire and with their faces covered by masks.
Pay close attention to the beginning because once names are thrown around
during the commotion, it's hard to remember who is who. The acting is
atrocious too and consists purely of the group shouting, screaming, swearing
a lot and running around in the forest. It seems that every actor here has
some form of accent. Maybe it was to distinguish who is who but the accents
really get in the way of any form of characterisation. If one of them spoke
differently, we'd at least be able to remember them. Since everyone has
them, it's a waste of time. The characters are so interchangeable that it
doesn't really matter who gets killed off because none of them have a
redeeming factor. The game of paintball requires teamwork and the characters
here all want the chance to live out some form of survivalist fantasy. So
when their fantasy becomes reality and the situation becomes a matter of
life and death, the film doesn't really do anything with it. They still run
around as if they're playing the game, barking out orders to each other and
I don't actually recall the camera lens staying still through the entire
film. It's always on the move and there's some weird angles at times. Two
characters are about to have a knife fight yet the camera lingers on their
midsections as opposed to whole body shots. It's quite unsettling on the
eyes and it gets frustrating to see the camera shaking and twisting every
minute. Stay still and let me have a look at what's going on! Handheld
cameras can have their use but not for an entire film - it's just too
frenetic.
The constant use of
the thermal vision goggles by the killer was a nice touch too as you see a
lot of the film from a first-person perspective. I thought it would be
overworked but it's more effective as the film goes on. Forget the film
being overly bloody because most of the kills happen through the
first-person vision of these goggles so it's just white liquid spurting
across the screen. This effect doesn't actually disguise the brutality of
some of the death scenes, it just gives them all a unique spin. It's a neat touch especially during one scene where one
unlucky victim is pummelled by a rifle butt. It adds a pleasing visual style
to the proceedings and is arguably the highlight of the film. These thermal
vision moments also contribute to the unveiling of the big plot twist.
Borrowing it from Hostel doesn't help
matters although I suppose it makes sense and the way it's revealed to the
viewer is pretty good.
Verdict
Paintball has got some great
visuals and odd moments of inspired genius so it's a pity that the script
let's it down in a big way with really weak characters and a complete lack
of tension and atmosphere. For paintball purists only but even then you'd
rather be playing it than watching it.
