Director Daniel Myrick has taken his excellent work from the ultra-low-budget “Blair Witch Hunt,” added some modest resources as befits that success and come with a great little tale of suspense and horror
The setting is a covert operation in Afghanistan that is dripping with guilt from the very beginning. As America watches our military efforts in the Middle East go down the drain a last ditch super-secret operation is started to uncover a mysterious force. The voice-overs are a shameless copy of “Apocalypse Now” but are coupled with such an excellent sound track (after “Blair Witch” and Peter Weir’s “Picnic at Hanging Rock”) that the audience is riveted to their seats as the adventure unfolds.
Jonas Ball is Ben Keynes, a CIA agent who shows up at a highly classified military base in Afghanistan to head a feisty group of Special Forces soldiers on a secret mission. The CIA has detected radioactive hot spots in a desolate region of arid mountains and forbidding wash-outs hundreds of miles from civilization. As the film progresses it is revealed as the site of the disappearance of a huge contingency of British forces many years earlier. Thousands of people disappeared without a trace. Compounding the suspense is the fact that the high-tech electric gear of the Special Forces unit gradually loses its effectiveness as they near their quarry.
But nearing their quarry is a relative success as none of them has a firm grip on exactly what the quarry is. In the end they have been sent not only to find the quarry, but define it. In Martin Sheen’s immortal words in “Apocalypse Now,” “I would have my mission and after it I would never want another.”
The cinematography is beautiful, constantly emphasizing the timelessness and immutability of the barren landscape. The shots are of the largest scale mesas, gullies and plains which serve to make the men look hopelessly small by comparison. The details of the rock, boulders and lifeless gravel make it abundantly clear than no man was ever intended to be there.
Like “Blair Witch,” the film starts off with full realism, an innocent and straightforward adventure film. But as it progresses it becomes terrifyingly obvious that something is dreadfully wrong. There has been a major miscalculation. This is accomplished in a most excellent manner by the sparse and well chosen special effects. Starting off at zero, they are gradually increased, but not to the point where they can not be ascribed to the men’s increasing fear of their unknown enemy. The pacing is as close to perfection as one can get.
Matching the modest special effects is the thoughtful and somber score that is increasingly replaced with distortions of human screams that seem to echo off the cliffs that take control of the men’s direction. In the end the score builds to a “2001: A Space Odyssey” percussive urgency that dares the beat of the heart to keep pace.
Like the men on the boat searching for Colonel Kurtz, the men on the elite team began to shoot at nothing. Strange weather effects begin to happen. Water is replaced with sand. Bodies disappear without explanation.
The ending certainly will not be revealed in this review, but it will be controversial. It will be considered either the strongest point of the film, or the weakest; but it will never be considered boring.
An excellent example of a very strong film that will have wide audience acceptance while still requiring a relatively modest budget, “The Objective” conjures up the maximum possible tension and horror with a minimum amount of bloodshed and physical violence. The focus is on the motivations of the group and the testing of their resolve in a place in which they have no place. Their future is always in their own hands and their survival depends as much on their ability to live with themselves as to survive in the wilderness.
Not even CIA agent Keynes knows exactly why they are there; but who knows why we go to war in the first place? Who can look into the hearts and souls of men and define killing as the solution. Or, as is suggested by the screenplay, the soldiers may already be dead the moment they enter onto the field of battle.
If you like scary films that let the audience scare themselves don’t miss this one.
Release: Tribeca Film Festival
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