I watched the trailer for "Don't Blink" and was instantly intrigued. I really enjoy suspenseful mystery movies and this looked like it would be a lot of fun, however I came out being pretty disappointed.

So the film starts out looking like your average run of the mill slasher movie. Happy song plays as we are introduced to a group of friends on a trip together. However once things get going it is clear that this is not a slasher movie, since there is no killer and people aren't being killed, they are just disappearing. The group freaks out as they are picked off one by one by nothing. I remained interested in the film mainly because I figured eventually we would find out where everyone was going and why they were disappearing in the first place, but we don't.

That's my main beef with this movie, it leads up to absolutely nothing. The whole thing is literally nothing but people disappearing. Imagine a slasher movie with all the good parts taken out. I really wanted to like this movie, but the ending made that really hard.

But with all the negative aside, I have to admit I was entertained throughout. The ending left me upset but the rest did manage to hold my attention.

5/10

Ten young people converge on a mountain lodge in the Rockies in the off season, but find it mysteriously abandoned. None of them can figure out what happened to the people and they don't have enough gas to leave, so they're stuck. The cast is headed by Brian Austin Green (Jack), Zack Ward (Alex), Mena Suvari (Tracy) and Joanne Kelly (Claire).

Parts of "Don't Blink" (2014) bring to mind movies like "Night of the Living Dead" (1968), "The Mist" (2007), "Phantoms" (1998) and "Donner Pass" (2011) with an ending that recalls "Wind Chill" (2007). But it's by far the least of these because, while the mysterious set-up is good for about the first 35-40 minutes, it becomes one-dimensional and predictable, e.g. when the young guy kneels down behind the bar.

Another flaw is that some of the dramatics feel forced and awkward, like the girl unconvincingly morphing into a preacher. Those other movies didn't have this problem because they had superior writers/filmmakers.

There are 3-4 worthy women in the cast, including Suvari, Fiona Gubelmann (Ella) and Samantha Jacober (Charlotte), but the director/writer never really takes advantage of their presence, but he did good enough, I guess.

The film runs 1 hour, 32 minutes and was shot in Ruidoso, New Mexico, USA.

GRADE: C

***SPOILER ALERT*** (Don't read unless you've seen the movie):

It might help to see the movie as a microcosm of death in our lives: Everyone and everything around us will eventually die one-by-one, so quick & unexpected it's like the blink of an eye. The catatonic girl (Charlotte) willfully calling her own disappearance symbolizes people who commit suicide. For everyone else, death comes in various unforeseen ways, often suddenly.

When a filmmaker makes a film, he should know more about the movie than the audience ever will. He should have back stories on all his characters and know the meaning of every event that takes place. The problem with 'Don't Blink' is that this is clearly not the case. Debut writer/director Travis Oates has come up with an interesting little premise for a film here, but sadly was unable to come up with an explanation of any real sort for his story. I'm not saying he needed to spell it out in clear letters to the audience, but there needed to be hints and clues that lead in some way to a plausible explanation for the viewers to at least speculate over. It's sad because this was only a good ending away from being a very fine horror/mystery film.

Mena Suvari's extremely brief screen time was a real surprise to me. I kept expecting her to come back into the story and that that would in some way hold the twist. Nope nothing. There one minute, gone the next. Her character was even revealed to be pregnant minutes before she was gone. For what reason? No idea. Oates might need to spend a bit more time polishing the script on whatever his next project is. Luckily though the rest of the cast was surprisingly good and watchable. A rarity in the horror genre. A particular stand-out for me was Zack Ward. His final scene had me captivated and was actually a very well written and performed piece of cinema.

I went into this film knowing it had a low rating here on IMDb and i Kept wondering to myself why. Then the ending occurred and I clicked. Oates tries to cover up his complete lack of an explanation with a clever ending but it simply isn't clever enough and thus never actually covers anything up at all. The dialogue he wrote throughout was very good. A little more intensity in some scenes would go a long way, but I think there is some real potential there. If he has another crack at the genre I look forward to seeing how it turns out.