There's a saying popular among filmmakers - "if it ain't on the page, it ain't on the stage". In the case of 'The Appearance of a Man' by Daniel Pace, it's pretty apparent that there wasn't a well-crafted story on any screen-written page involved in the movie. From the stiff dialog to the dizzying and incohesive turn of events, it's clear that the screenwriter wasn't exactly sure of which direction he wanted to take the movie, and boy did it show. I'm a big fan of Indie/Art films and supporting new filmmakers, but good god, this movie was crappy.
Without giving too much of the plot(?) away, 'The Appearance of a Man' is a film based around the mysterious lights that appeared over
The sad thing is, is 'The Appearance of A Man' wasn't lacking in solid cinematography, acting or production. In fact, all of these aspects were pretty passable for a low budget film. It was the disjointed, haphazard writing that did this bad boy in. I literally felt like I needed a copy of the script in front of me just to have an inkling of what the hell was going on in the movie at some points. Substandard, irrelevant subplots wreck into a wonky main story, and the actors (as decent as they may be) were stuck playing one-dimensional characters throughout the entire film. I'm really into psychological thrillers - I'd go as far to say that they're my favorite genre of movie. But 'The Appearance of a Man' is far from a psychological thriller. It's more of a writer's brain-diarrhea transformed into a movie.
I hate to come off as a prick. Well, I take that back - I don't really hate coming off as a prick as much as I hate seeing decent talent being wasted, and that's pretty much the case with 'The Appearance of a Man'. You have to give the guys props though - I couldn't have made a bigger mess of a potentially interesting story if I tried.
