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Paintball (2009)

Dir: Daniel Benmayor

A group of multi-national thrill seekers are blindfolded and dumped in the woods to take part in an extreme paintball campaign against another, unseen, team where they will find boxes of equipment to help them at various map points.
When opened the first box is found to contain a real bullet proof vest.
Confusion becomes realisation though when suddenly one of the team is shot not by a paint pellet, but by a bullet.

Fleeing from the now lethal fire the team, with no idea where they are, must fight for their lives before it’s game over for all of them….

First things first.
“Paintball” (a Spanish production, though filmed in English) blasts off right into the action as soon as it starts.
Initially we're thrown right into the chaotic, frenzied paintball game (which is actually rather fun to watch and here played with some amazingly fancy looking guns) which 10 minutes later slams us into the ‘real threat’ part of the movie and it literally never lets up again until the end credits.
Good, head spinning, movie making as far as entertaining the audience goes.
60 minutes in in fact and already the amount of stuff that has happened in "Paintball" would put most film's to shame at their 90 minute mark.

But perhaps this energy and pacing is a double-edged sword as the film can get actually tiring to watch because their is no real downtime in the body of the film and of course, as mentioned, even the opening of the film was simply lots of shouting, running, shooting and ceaseless paint splats.

Thankfully the screenplay manages to deliver (after the initial confusion of who the hell is who, not helped by the protective face masks) a distinctive bunch of characters who are all well acted by the cast who all manage to sketch their roles out despite the endless fleeing, fighting and dying.
This is also a well crafted bunch of people.
Most of the team are very driven, they have never met each other before and suddenly they find themselves being hunted by an unseen enemy of unknown origin and number.
As such their is almost no team aesthetic here. They argue, they back-bite, they betray and they do all they can to personally survive.
A few of them will take a small risk for another member, but others will literally leave another hanging as they have no personal or emotional link to anyone else there.
It's a bleak sketch of humanity, but to me it rings totally true for such a situation.

The creeping camera is great idea, but also a weird one that takes some getting used to.
The way the camera acts is like the audience itself is someone running with the team, it's POV 101, even though it does not represent any character. As such you have to learn that despite the way the camera moves (and it does add to the excitement and tension of the film) it goes against what we normally associate with such an idea (that a character is being followed or stalked) as it does not represent anyone else, not even the killer.

What does represent the killer's POV is the major idea highlight in the film.
The killer wears thermal imaging goggles which give the scenes a bright white/grey, (not black/green) look, which in of itself is not unique or that stunning. But the way it’s used here is very clever and visually important to the movies entire aesthetic make-up.

The film is pretty violent in general, but the real nasty, messy, kills are shot POV through the thermal goggles, as such we can still make out the nastiness happening but it now has a unique feel.
The filmmakers can not only get away with some cool gore ideas that could cause rating/censor problems if shot 'normal' but the way such scenes now look, the way the bright white blood outrageously shoots and spurts out of people for example, is really memorable.
A brutal head smashing works on a whole new level purely due to this method of filming it.

But the best use of the killer's thermal imagery is when it’s used to reveal things we (or the other characters) can't see.
There are two superb ‘thermal reveal’ scenes, but the best is the first and it's a really effective surprise and such a great visual trick.

The movies only real problems come in the plotting of the main set-up.
The first ‘thermal reveal’ scene also reveals more of what is happening plot wise, and although it’s a different slant on the idea, we have been here before.
This plot turn also brings in other characters and sadly they seem to have found all the bad actors they had hanging around to play them. Some of the line delivery here (maybe due to the fact a lot of the actors were Spanish, but speaking in English) is particularly grating.

The, rather low key, finale is also a bit of a mess even if it still works.
The real problem comes right at the very end though. This is where the plot unravels as we now have a couple of holes left unfilled (though you can sort of fill them yourself if you think outside the screenplay, but unlikely actions have to be accounted for) and we have a "oh, so what's going to happen then" moment thanks to the very last shot.
But you can form solutions of your own to this scene that still just about satisfy. But this confusion is made annoying by the fact there was no need for it, as without the final moments all was fine and the film had reached a perfectly fine conclusion.
Although the final scene does seem to bring us back to the aformentioned way the camera is the audience's view, crucially not a character's view, and as such the final refrain is obviously aimed at us...those who have watched it all unfold.

So be prepared to feel a bit at a loss and a bit unsatisfied as the credits roll, but thankfully it's not a movie destroying problem by any means (and that's coming from someone who hates dubious endings to films) and the rest is so fun, tense, well staged, visually clever, and just violent and bloody enough, to ensure a real good time is had.