Review: Amber Alert (2012)

It's getting to the point where making fun of and/or ripping apart the average Found Footage/POV Horror flick is like picking on the slow kid in class; the slow kids can't defend themselves, and it's usually a complete asshole who picks on the defenseless, and we really don't like being the asshole.

While I would never pick on anyone who is defenseless in real life, I really have no choice but to be the asshole when it comes to the slow kids of the Horror world.

Amber Alert might be the worst movie I've seen all year, and that's saying a lot.

The premise of this movie is a truly great one, and if done well, it could make for one hell of a FF flick. As it stands though, this movie is little more than frustrating and horrible.

 

Nate and Sam are two wacky friends who are out and about making an audition tape for some Reality TV Show that they want to be on. Nate is the pudgy, doting best friend who is secretly in love with Sam. Sam is the cute, thin girl who keeps Nate in the friend-zone, because she has no interest in him whatsoever, but can still get him to be her bitch on command.

How fun are they?

While driving down the highway, taping everything for their audition, they come across an Amber Alert on a freeway billboard. True terror sets in when they realize, about ten seconds after seeing the alert, that the car in front of them is the car mentioned in the Amber Alert! Even more terror sets in when we get to witness two of the dumbest people in existence argue back and forth for the next 70 minutes.

These are the aforementioned two people.

They follow the car, alert the Police to its whereabouts (even though they are too busy doing something more important to investigate), and they even walk up to the car in a gas station to get a better look. Sam sees the girl in the backseat, and instead of breaking the window and grabbing her, she drops a microphone in the car, and they follow they driver some more. And argue some more. And do things that no one who isn't mentally retarded would ever do.

This movie should have been called Screaming Alert.

Finally the Cops show up! Of course after being told to go to the Sheriff's Station -to hand over the tape that they have and give a statement- Sam decides that they should keep looking for the girl instead, and Nate the pussy whines about it, but does her bidding anyway. Worst of all, her reasoning is so weak, that as bad as this movie has been so far it just became painfully worse. Its obvious that shes a moron, and homeboy should have long since told her to shut the fuck up, but then again that's why they're friends; she's in control. That's also why he's in the friend-zone, because his bitch-ass deserves to be there.

Dude, move on.

Darkness falls, and they lose their quarry. Somehow though, Sam catches wind of an address (?!?), Googles it, and they head there to investigate. It's his house! Wow, she's good. So then they break inside, search the ramshackle home in the dark, and find some guns... and then they keep searching.

Then it ends, like every other FF flick seems to end, and we breathe a sigh of relief.

OMG I found him on the Google!

It ended.

"

His shirt says "Cuck."

Plot points, and the ridiculous nature of their failure; that's the clinic that Amber Alert put on for us. This movie fails to make sense on such a massive scale, that it really felt like a middle finger from the people who made it.

- The Amber Alert is broadcast on a billboard while our main characters are driving down the highway, and 10 seconds later, one of them is like "isn't that the car right there?" Now, the driver was feverishly talking to and paying attention to the chick in the passenger seat, they pass under the Amber Alert doing average highway speed, so how did he know what it said? Did he really read that sign, absorb its contents, and have time to process it so quick, all in the midst of a lively discussion?

- So they call the Cops, and say they see the car with the alleged kidnapped kid inside, and the Police say they have a lot of calls and they won't be there for 15 minutes? Wouldn't they stay on the phone? A lot of calls or not, wouldn't Police investigate a call in which someone says "We see the guy right in front of us!" first?

Kill him now. Please.

-If this is a Found Footage tape, how is the licence plate blurred and why is the swearing bleeped out?
Raw footage? Are you saying that the Cops edited this "real" tape, to highlight their ineptitude and culpability in the events of the kidnapping and attempted rescue?

- This movie is full of people doing things that no one in their right mind would ever do. I could see following a car if you really thought there was a kidnapped child inside, but I would have been on the phone with the Cops until they showed up. I'd lie to get them to show up. And for the record, if I'm driving the car, and some witless banshee of a she-bitch in the passenger insists on screaming at me the whole time, the car trip would be over in very short order. Then again, I don't have a vagina like Nate apparently did, so we would have never been driving anywhere together to begin with.

Shut up or walk, issue solved.

I can barely read that, and it's a still image from a movie trailer.

In many FF flicks, the main issues are believability and characters, and their lack of quality. In Amber Alert, we are presented with what may be the two worst, most annoying characters we've seen in recent memory. The girl in this is seriously the most annoying and moronic bitch ever. I can't fathom how anyone would write a character like her, and think that she'd be compelling in the least.

The protagonists were so annoying, and their constant arguing so distracting, that I never once felt any sort of dread about their situation or even the kidnapping. Even when Sam drops a microphone through the window of the car they're following (?!?), and we hear the creepy guy talking menacingly to the scared child in his backseat, it evoked nothing. I cheered for the creeper to kill the heroes. That's bad.

Hipster? Hispter.

Amber Alert takes a truly great premise for a Found Footage flick, and makes a total mess out of it. This movie is more about two people arguing and bickering incessantly than it is about two people following a guy who may have a kidnapped kid. The characters are horribly annoying, the local Police are horribly inept, and not one thing in the movie makes any sort of rational sense whatsoever.

If you're looking to watch a movie that will leave you pissed off and wanting to punch things, this is your flick. Enjoy.

Not even this QT could save Amber Alert from being the trainwreck that it is.