Melissa L
It's a little different than your average horror movie. I'd recommend it.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
04/13/24
Full Review
Audience Member
Among Friends is Danielle Harris's directorial debut as a film director the movie is about some friends who are invited to their friend's house who is also the evening game night's host, (whose name is Bernadette) to play a Murder Mystery Party game, but once they are paralyzed by a drug that Bernadette has given them and bound by silver duct tape to her dining table chairs, they end up in one terrifying situation in which they are forced to unexpectedly play a brand new game that they never saw coming. After watching and studying this movie's filming style, it very much looks like a horror movie that a filmmaking student from UCLA could've made. The movie isn't awful but it certainly isn't a very good one. The movie script has amateur written dialogue and it seemed like for the casting, Danielle brought in a bunch of indie actors who don't have that much acting experience, and by seeing their performances it seems like this was their very first horror movie. The special effects are decent and is the only good thing that stands out in this film that had been done well. The story is decent, but certain scenes that involve deja vu and weird hallucinations that one female character has due to her taking drugged Mushrooms takes away from the horror aspect of the film and it seems like the story within the movie turns into some sort of horror paranoia nonsense. The camera use in this movie is not done well, and I was stunned with surprise when I looked at a behind the scenes video of Among Friends with Danielle Harris, and there are five cameras that look like they're suited for shooting pictures of models for online magazine covers rather than for shooting a movie. One thing that I hated in this film that I cannot dismiss, is that Danielle Harris has her name on the cover of the DVD, Blu-ray and posters as a star in the movie. She was only in the film for about three minutes, during a hallucination sequence that doesn't make much sense. Danielle Harris's name should be at the very bottom of the casting list instead of the very first on the list. I was expecting Danielle Harris to do a horror movie that had a lot more going on than just a bunch of people sitting around at a dinner table during a hypothetical murder mystery party, and getting tortured very brutally. This is a movie that I cannot recommend, and the reason why I do not recommend this movie is because Danielle Harris could've gotten a larger film crew and had done this film a whole lot better. I am a huge of fan of Danielle Harris when she stars in horror movies, but not when she's directing them. I understand that this was at least one of the first horror movies that she had directed. But she has been in the film industry for an extremely long time now, she has lots of connections and I feel like she used only three percent of her connections to get this movie made. She had to do fundraising in order to get some of the money for this film to happen, and that is something that gets me questioning the quality of a movie before I see it. Normally, producers find investors to get the money for a movie, even when the genre is horror. As for the vibe that I got from this movie, it certainly wasn't a good one. I felt like Danielle Harris tried to combine the 1980s horror movie style and Rob Zombie's horror movie style when he did his two Halloween films. In someways I feel like Rob Zombie destroyed Danielle Harris's career, both in acting and in the film industry in general. This movie is okay, the only people who will find this movie extremely entertaining and love this film though, are horror fans who are to lazy to use their brains and want to have a horror movie where there is very little going on. True horror fans though, will find this one okay, it's entertaining to a certain degree, which is that this isn't a boring movie, but this horror film explains itself, regular movie viewers don't need a movie buff to stand up and tell them what's going on in the movie. This is the kind of horror movie where if you miss the first ten minutes, you haven't missed anything at all as far as character development and following the story. The viewers are able to fill in the time gaps if they miss some of the movie. Lastly, the production companies who worked on this movie have done other films, but these production companies such as: The Little Birds Productions and Hollywood Treasures, aren't at all as well known compared to the huge production companies and studios, such as Paramount, Universal Pictures, BlumHouse and New Line Cinema. I do believe that some very big production companies passed on this movie and that's one of the reasons why Danielle Harris had to scale downward and end up working with two of the less well known production companies. I can't recommend this movie for you, because of the reason being that I expected a lot more from Danielle Harris since she has been in the film industry as an actress for such a long time, and normally actors and actresses are able to transition to the behind the scenes filmmaking roles, such as director, screenwriter and producer a whole lot easier since they have a whole lot of connections. I wish I could recommend this movie, but unfortunately I can't.
Written by
Bailey Giannini - movie buff & amateur online movie critic
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
01/13/23
Full Review
Audience Member
The worst movie I have seen in a long time. Painful to watch. I fast forwarded to the end after getting 3/4's of the way through and even then, I was tempted to turn it off and not finish it.
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
02/13/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Trashier retread of The Loved Ones populated with some very unlikable characters. It has a malicious sense of humour about itself that makes it easier to tolerate than Saw or others in the torture porn sub genre but this will still be sadistic and unpleasant to all but gore hungry faithfuls
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
01/20/23
Full Review
Audience Member
This was terrible oh god. Wish I rented it instead of purchase . So disappointed!!
Rated 0.5/5 Stars •
Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars
01/31/23
Full Review
Audience Member
an OK low budget horror movie...just that
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
01/12/23
Full Review
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