It’s been nearly a decade, but Dan Myrick, director of the horror classic The Blair Witch Project, has released his second major feature. Yeah, he’s directed a few direct-to-video features since Blair Witch, but none with the scope, ambition or production value as his latest feature.
So what to make of The Objective? Well, here’s the trailer first:
The film revolves around the fate of a special forces unit in Afghanistan tasked with finding a Muslim cleric in a mountain range well off the figurative road map. The unit is under the command of a CIA officer who seems to have a secret agenda he is not sharing with the rest of the men, a mission well beyond the scope of their initial directive. As the men trek further into the mountains, strange occurences begin to happen, and the men begin to realize that their enemy is far less concrete than they originally believe.
Okay, so I guess the best description of this film is some weird cross between Apocalypse Now and an Afghani Blair Witch. The same claustrophobic tension so prevalent in the woods of Burkettsville, Maryland hovers over this mountain range, which as one character notes, may as well be Mars. The terrain is that alien, and stunning when caught on film. Myrick really knows how to use the terrain and surrounding environment to his benefit, to really build the suspense surrounding the plot. The further they go, the more you realize they’re not likely to ever make it back. Again, this is very similar to the mood established in Blair Witch.
As far as the actually story itself, it really starts out well. Not only is the supposed mission shrouded in mystery, as the cleric appears to have left a remote farming town and gone Colonel Kurtz in the mountains, but there is always the suggestion of the sub-mission (or alternate mission) that the CIA operative seems to be leading, unbeknownst to the men of the unit. It’s one of those situations where the main character knows far more than the viewer, and the viewer is slowly given the details to compose the overarching truth. I think, for the first half of this movie, it really works well. Even beyond the tension instilled by the foreignness of the environment is the tension constructed by seeds of doubt and mistrust planted within the unit itself as things begin to fall apart.
And that’s the strongest part of the film: when things begin to fall apart. Unfortunately, the film takes an odd paranormal/extraterrestial/spiritual turn somewhere in the second half, and the movie devolves from mystery-thriller to some sci-fi exploration of the human psyche and spiritual awareness…or something like that. I don’t know. The ending was simply too abstract, finished on a really insignificant note (the interview) and added very little to everything that preceded it. I get that some movies are left open-ended and it’s left to the audience for interpretation. In some movies, that works well. It does not work well here, though, because the Kurtz-ian de-evolution of character and descent into hopelessness amidst duty to country just does not synchronize with the last ten or so minutes of the film, which are heavy on abstract imagery and symbolism and light on answers or general indications as to what anything referred to previously. The film suggests a legend/mythos to construct some of these overaching thematic elements, but only briefly and never really develops it. I mean, I look at a movie like Ravenous and see a plot that suggested a legend and actually built upon it, drew parallels between historical events and a fairly well described myth. That makes sense to me. I can trace that development. I could not, however, trace the mythology that Myrick attempted to develop in this film. Maybe that reflects poorly on me, but I just didn’t think the film knew what to do in regards to this part of the story.
This one’s a pretty obvious split. It starts out well and the little moments that highlight their descent into a hopeless state of being lost and damned – a firefight that leaves behind no bodies, canteens whose contents change from water to sand, etc. – are very strong. However, the back half of the movie is comparably weak and despite its willingness to take chances and not follow narrative convention, simply does not provide enough substance to justify the leaps that it takes. Myrick might be a gifted filmmaker, but he could still stand to learn a thing or two about developing his plots.
Filed under: Movie Review, Movies, Trailer, Video
