Arcadian

hm. who would've thought "lukewarm coming of age drama", "post apocalyptic home alone" and "ballsy monster action" don't mix. some producer told benjamin brewer that this movie needed to be really dark and he misunderstood completely.

The monster designs are great and the post-apocalyptic world is reflected well despite the low budget, but Arcadian has a serious pacing problem. While the script tries to deepen the characters, it becomes very slow and sometimes even boring. The directing is definitely not effective, it would be more accurate to say it is subpar; because while the monster attacks could have been much more frightening, the director unfortunately cannot achieve this. In short, it's a movie below its potential.

How did these people survive for so long?

Anyone who uses shaky cam as a filming technique should be thrown in jail

the post apoc teen setting was cool

points for weird creatures

The monsters with their ridiculous flapping jaws were annoying to say the least. The story was just average, with nothing ground breaking about it or new. Totally forgettable not so scary horror movie. The character development had some potential, but overall the concept was quite weak, and the story telling was amateurish.

This monster design deserved a better movie built around it.

I'm a sucker for Cage movies. His filmography is amazing. This guy is so much underappreciated by the big public.

Pretty good creature design, and it’s got a few mildly effective scenes. The pacing is an issue, with a lot of time being devoted specifically to the underwhelming romance, and the horror being rather sparse. A big fault is the tension being almost nonexistent, with the main characters rarely being show in any real danger. This could’ve been great if it had more bite to it, but it’s still a watchable, if forgettable, movie.

To a great extent an "A Quiet Place" ripoff, which is sad given how derivative that crapfest already was. There is some lame action eventually, but 85% of it is character drama, and the writing is really terrible. The only saving grace consists in one or two creative features of the monsters' behavior, but this accounts for maybe twenty seconds of screen time in total.

The film is quite effective working within a well-defined and intimate scope - which also ends up being its weakness, as there are many good ideas that simply were not explored or deepened.

Monster design is cool. It does enough to elicit an emotional response. I love Nicolas Cage, though he's kinda cut out of it at a certain point... though I also feel like the way they reintroduce him is very fitting of Cage. Mystery surrounds basically everything, but I don't think we need to know all the details. Events escalate well. It's just a good monster flick that doesn't really reach greatness, but also doesn't have to in order to be entertaining.