The Rift

The Rift is an unsuccessful attempt to make a mysterious horror movie such us those made primarily in Hollywood, where they know best how to do that. The film is marred by characters who are unattractive (in every sense of the word), a lengthy and uninteresting exposition, and an unsuccessful attempt at hackneyed tricks to create suspense when the characters are wandering through the forest. Bebjak is a good director and his The Line, which is much more complex in terms of the characters and story, was great. This type of genre flick, however, obviously requires a different kind of talent, and probably a better-adapted script that would not smack of a shoddy attempt to make quick money. (05/15/2019)

Confused madness reaching almost parodic dimensions of the Slovak interpretation of the Blair Witch Mystery. I don't know if I perceived the film myself or if I slept or was awake and it was somehow the same - my thoughts were wandering elsewhere and the film was so confused that whether I missed five minutes or thirty, it didn't show in the end. (12/25/2019)

Unlike most of the reviewers here, I felt physically uncomfortable in the first half of the movie, so I was oftentimes too scared to breathe while they were wandering through the forest. The atmosphere could be cut with a knife! And the music with those crazy sounds to go with it! Hell, I was really scared. The final denouement didn't satisfy me much and there were a few weak moments during the plot, but it is still a very good horror contribution from our Slovak brothers. I had a comparably intense experience the last time I watched The Blair Witch Project. And this is a really big hats off from me to the creators. (75%) (07/13/2022)

I'm sorely tempted to defend this, because up to a point I recognize Bebjak as a smart genre director who at last is no longer trying to follow up on something that's already died eight times and been dug up again seven times. But in The Rift he clearly struggled not only with the original assignment of making a three-part series (why on earth and whose idea was it?), which makes the first third deviate from the rest of the plot with an etude in a haunted madhouse that suffers terribly from bad sound, but also from budget and time constraints. Then, when a quartet of horribly acted and altogether shallow characters venture into a sparse, threadbare, leafy forest where they walk on a contour line, yammering the whole time about their inability to reach the summit, you kind of feel sorry for them all. Especially when you know by the exposition that we're going to see problems with diabetes, drug addiction, whistles, and who knows what else. It's a shame when the nature of the mystery is so reminiscent of the anomalies in the PC game Stalker, and perhaps the scene where the protagonist's girlfriend, whom he calls by a strange name, runs off into the darkness, while a strange spiral of lights circles somewhere in the back left of the frame, hinting at the promise of a mystery that the rest of the film is not capable of delivering. And in general, forest horror films are really not my thing. You can see a better example of how to make a lot of scares out of very little in the woods in Italy's Across the River. (08/07/2019)

Slovak Blair Witch/ The Fourth Kind I will enjoy. The well-made trailer caught my attention, not revealing too much and instead saving the best for the full version. The first half may be a bit tired and struggles to draw you into the story, but after a certain point, it takes on an incredible pace, and I got goosebumps about three times. Which is enough for me in a Slovak horror movie. Atmospheric, excellently acted, unpredictable. A respectable four stars. (08/02/2019)