13 Sins (2014)

I saw this film because it was recommended after seeing Nerve, due to a similar concept.

Acting is good. Writing is good. Seeing Tara from True Blood in it was awesome and she had great chemistry with the main character which was nice. It was great to see her in a different role.

I like films like this because it tells a good story.

I would love to see more films like this but as far as I know Nerve and Cheap Thrills are the only similar ones.

Great ride, dark, good, feels more like real life then other fantasy films.

Fmovies: I will say it now: if you watch this film, don't quit until the 90 minutes have expired. Otherwise you will miss the devilishly clever final twists which are well-foreshadowed. In fact it is textbook screen writing. Fiction writers from all genres should take note - this is how you do it.

However, it's easy to change channels when watching 13 Sins. The low budget and (at times) pedestrian acting make it unremarkable to the eye, and it's tempting to go looking for something better. But stick with it, as what 13 Sins lacks in scale and scope it makes up for with suspense and intelligent twists. If you're very good, you might see it coming. The events of the third act are telegraphed clearly in the first, although you'll have to be smart to put the pieces together. This is where the film succeeds. Mysteries should always give the viewer a chance to solve the puzzle, and while 13 Sins doesn't make it easy, you can certainly do it. In fact I'm laughing out loud at myself for not seeing it coming.

That said, 13 Sins is a flawed film. It's tried to blur the lines between a suspense thriller and horror film. There are some hackneyed horror moments that could have been handled more effectively. A handful of gory scenes were obtuse and unnecessary, and perhaps would have been better if done with more subtlety. This seems to be the fault of the director who is apparently influenced by the style of independent horror-film makers of the 90s and 2000s who don't understand the value of tension. Gore on its own is ineffective. Horror is equal parts what we see and don't see. Case study: the original Alien showed us everywhere the creature could be, and in turn revealed them to be empty, letting our minds wander, letting us experience what the terrified characters were feeling. When the ultimate moment comes, it's done logically, and with nuance and flair. There's no gore on screen that didn't need to be there. All horror writers should study this.

The other problem lies with the film's occasional desire to go beyond it's limitations and try to establish a grander scale. There's an "escape" set piece that falls short of competency because they didn't have the money for good special effects, and it showed. You could have just left it out. An independent film should work around its budget instead of stretching it.

Anyway, out of all the slim pickings of 2014 so far - which is shaping up to be another terrible year for film - this low-budget suspense thriller has actually impressed me. Elliot's (the protagonist's) transformation was mostly plausible, aside from a few nonsense moments. It's sheer intelligence and gripping, relentless pace kept me watching until the bitter end. However, while I have said that the final act is quite good, it is let down by an incompetent epilogue which leaves us with a Downer Ending instead of one which is left open to the audience to interpret.

I recommend it as a rental only, but I DO recommend you see it.

I am a man of very few words, so I am not going to give a long, drawn- out, in-depth review. This was a wonderful movie. It is loads of fun IF (and only if) you have as dark of a sense of humor as I do. See it. You will not be disappointed as long as (as I said before) you have a very dark sense of humor and you like movies in which the main character is psychologically tortured. End of review.

Only one question: How the hell did this do SO poorly at the box office?! I mean, how does a movie (ANY MOVIE) gross less than $10,000?! I mean, "Jaws: The Revenge" made over $20,000,000 for God's sake. It is not exactly Hitchcock's "Psycho", but "13 Sins" is still a really fun movie.

13 Sins fmovies. Some people here have never seen a movie it seems. How is this a brilliant movie?! This is one of the ones you watch in its entirety because it's so provocatively bad. It does not only not make any sense in itself and is very inconsequential on top but literally everyone in it lacks any sort of common sense, too. It's very unsatisfying. I would not ever recommend it to anyone, although I do sometimes host a trash movie night where we watch infuriatingly bad films that make you scream at the screen what an actual, thinking person would do instead in complete disbelief. For that type of entertainment, it's a good contender, if that's your thing go ahead. 7/10 for ridiculing it, 3/10 as an actual movie and that's generous on both those numbers.

In New Orleans, the salesman Elliot Brindle (Mark Webber) is full of debts and expecting a promotion to get married with his girlfriend Shelby (Rutina Wesley) that is pregnant. However his unethical chief fires him and Elliot is desperate since he supports his intellectually disabled brother Michael Brindle (Devon Graye) with his health insurance. He reaches the rock bottom when his estranged racist father (Tom Bower) tells that he is going to live with him. Out of the blue, Elliot receives a phone call and a stranger invites him to participate in a game where he may win a large amount and become a millionaire provided he accomplishes thirteen tasks. Initially the skeptical Elliot needs to kill a fly and then eat it. After each task, Elliot finds the promised deposit in his bank account. He decides to accept the invitation, and the tasks become aggressive, gruesome, brutal and offensive. When Elliot decides to quit the game, he realizes that there is no return for him.

"13 Sins" is a film that uses the storyline fairly inspired in the 1997 "The Game". The film holds the attention of the viewer and entertains, but the omnipresence of the instructor of the game is impossible to believe. In addition, how could the system drop all the accusations against Elliot if he played havoc with the precinct, inclusive shooting the foot of the police captain among others atrocities? My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "13 Pecados" ("13 Sins")

"13 Sins" has a lot in common with another recent low-budget, independent film, "Cheap Thrills." In both, a down-on-his-luck young man, driven by extreme desperation, agrees to perform a series of unsavory/immoral/illegal acts in exchange for ever larger quantities of money.

The protagonist of "13 Sins," a psychological thriller written by David Birke and Daniel Stamm and directed by Stamm, is Elliot Brindle (Mark Webber), a harried and harassed insurance agent who has a number of people depending on him for their livelihood and support. These include his pregnant fiancé ("True Blood's" Rutina Wesley), his mentally- challenged younger brother (Devon Graye) and a cantankerous racist dad (Tm Power) who's been evicted from his home and now has to move in with Elliot and his black girlfriend. Then Elliot is summarily fired from his job, leaving him utterly bereft and desperate, until, that is, he receives a call from a mysterious stranger who offers to make Elliot a fortune if he successfully performs 13 tasks as part of a surreal "game show," the hitch being that he can't let anyone in on what he's doing or he'll lose all his winnings.

At first the tasks seem simple enough, but as they escalate in intensity, it quickly becomes apparent that the object of the game is to "show that anyone can be turned into a monster." And Elliot is only too willing to prove that point.

The mood is grim and the humor pitch-black in this Kafkaesque tale of an ordinary man caught in an incomprehensible nightmare from which he cannot awaken, a nightmare filled with shadowy figures and disembodied voices that hold him in their implacable grip - though, if truth be told, the lure of easy wealth can be awfully hard to resist, even when the price is as potentially dear as it is here. The movie is creepy and disturbing in its unflinching look at the morally depraved depths to which desperate people will sink in an effort to ameliorate their situation. It forces us to look at a lot of unsettling aspects of human nature - aspects we might not be all that willing to face - but that's what makes it an effective little horror film in the long run.