Fantastic Fest 2009: SALVAGE Review

Talk about a disappointing film. Salvage is the story of a girl being dropped off at her mom’s house on Christmas eve against her will. Her father is going on to his mother’s house and they’ll all meet back up on “boxing day”. BUT THEN out of no where the girl finds her mother having sex with a random guy and leaves, going across the street dropping her character almost completely. We spend a large portion of the movie with a character only to have the entire movie shift to her mom’s perspective and it ruins all of the set up.

But that’s not the plot. The plot is that just a mile from a small British town a unmarked cargo container has washed up on shore and brought something dangerous with it. When a random military group shows up telling everyone to get in their house after shooting the local doctor single mother Beth must find her daughter and save her from what’s outside their house.

The premise actually isn’t bad, but the execution is so poor and the characters are so bad that there’s nobody worth rooting for. Beth is a selfish bitch, her daughter is an annoying snot, and Beth’s lover Kieran is even worse because he’s a father and cheating on his wife.

The scares in the film are few and far between, and when you finally see what the container has brought it’s the most underwhelming thing I’ve seen in a movie in a long time, very disappointing.