Did you people see the same film I saw?

Absolutely the worst movie.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Although the Movie Looks Pretty Good and is Slickly Presented for a Very Low Budget Entry in the Teen Hottie in Peril Category, this is Far from an Engaging Story and is So Bland, Considering its Subject Matter, One Wonders, What's the Point?If it's an Attempt at Making a Non-Gory, Serial-Killer, Social Media Warning, it Mostly Fails to Make an Impression, of Any Kind. It is Even Less than Mediocre Because it is Even Less than Anything Approaching Entertaining for its Target Audience.The Acting is Universally Bad, Especially the Non-Hotties. The Trailer Park Mother is a Clichéd, Chain Smoking, TV Watcher who is So Familiar it Bores to Tears. The Shaking Alcoholic Mother of the First Missing Girl Overacts So Much it is Amazing the Director Allowed the Performance to Stand. The Male Actors, the Cop, the Nerd, and the Father are All just Awful.Overall, it is Not Even Worth a Watch because it is Anemic, Embarrassingly Acted, and Fails to Deliver the Minimum of Suspense and Thrills that is Central to this Kind of Thing.Note...For Fairness and Balance...there is one good Acting turn and that is Olivia Dawn York. She delivers the only believable Character in a Cast of Thespians who would have benefited from a Director that seemed to be Elsewhere.

Movie has okay acting, but the plot line is dull and clichéd, much like every other aspect of the movie. Cinematography is pretty artsy and tasteful, although much of it is blue-toned (reminiscent of Harry Potter 7 Part 1) for added mysterious and negative effect. No surprises with character development (there is hardly any) or plot twists (again, none) and while you might like it to watch Anna or Tania, you'd be better off watching the actors and actresses in better-formulated movies. You'll spend a better use of your time.Also, I have a BIG BEEF with the setting!!!This is SO not Goshen, IN. None of the picture or sets they used are actual places or even close to it. And Goshen has never had mysteries like women disappearing because of internet creeps....Ugh, this irritates me when they try to cliché real towns. Goshen's not even that small! And in fact, it's very much into the modern age - bigger and better than Elkhart, the neighbor city I grew up in, that's for sure. School systems are excellent, the County seat and Fairgrounds are there (2nd largest Fair in the country, and no that doesn't mean it's hicksville, we had Lady Antebellum two years ago), some of the best craftsmen in the country, and even a college. Geez, it's not some "small-town Indiana where bad things happen and kids feel trapped" like this movie wants to make it into. As a writer myself, I firmly believe that unless you are very familiar with with the city or town you are setting something in, you just need to make up your own town. Otherwise you make an entire audience view it in whatever light you want it to be for your story, and that's not fair to the city or the people that live there.

Elsewhere is a middling little concoction that's one or two ingredients away from being really good. It's like a Nancy Drew Mystery without a mystery but with a serial killer. Writer/director Nathan Hope came up with a lot of nice ancillary pieces and then assembled them around an empty core. The result is a promising beginning, an anticipatory middle and a disappointing ending.Jillian and Sarah (Tania Raymonde and Anna Kendrick) are teenaged best friends. Jillian is a rocker chick whose edginess hides a desperate desire to get far away from a life she hates. Sarah is a good girl and that's pretty much it. The character has the disposition of a coat rack and while Anna Kendrick makes a very cute coat rack, Sarah being such a non-entity becomes the biggest problem in the entire movie.After a stretch of time where Jillian and Sarah lounge around doing terribly typical teenage stuff, Jillian disappears. Sarah investigates and with no help from her absentee mother, she turns to computer geek Jasper (Chuck Carter) for assistance. The only clue is a video sent from Jillian's cell phone that shows the inside of a school bus and then Jillian screams.Sarah eventually discovers that Jillian is only one of several missing girls, but who is responsible? Is it Officer Berg (Jeff Daniel Phillips), the creepy local cop? Billy (Paul Wesley), the high school dickhead? Is it the unstable Patty (Shannon Holt), mother of a girl who vanished 5 years ago? Well, there's honestly not much of a puzzle to figure out here. There really is no series of clues in this story that eventually lead to the identity of the killer. There are only a couple of pathetic, obviously constructed red herrings inserted into the script long after a reasonably astute viewer has deduced everything for him or herself. I mean, the average episode of Speed Buggy or Jabberjaw had a more elaborate mystery to solve than this film.That narrative weakness isn't that aggravating because writer/director Hope emphasizes the characters and their interrelationships over plot developments. The roles are all fairly clichéd - "girl acting out", "jock jackass", "super strict father" - but they're well constructed clichés and the cast perfectly provides the formulaic performances for which they were asked. Except for Jeff Daniel Phillips, who appears to be doing a bad Jack Nicholson impersonation all the time he's on screen. And the connections/confrontations between the characters achieve a certain believability. For example, you can feel the layered friendship between Jillian and Sarah and the long standing animosity between Billy and Jasper.Unfortunately, the blankest and least developed character in Elsewhere is also the main character in the story. Sarah has the most lines and is in almost every scene, but has the least amount of personality in the whole cast. That's not Kendrick's fault. She doesn't do a bad acting job. There's simply nothing distinctive, individualistic or interesting about Sarah. Having such a void as the leading role undermines every dramatic aspect of the movie. It's not a fatal flaw but, geez, this thing would have been soooooo much better if Sarah has disappeared and Jillian had been the one to look for her.Elsewhere does look good, moves at a satisfactory clip and has several effective though quite illogical scares. Combined with more than adequate acting in all but one case, that's usually enough for a film like this. But the emptiness of its plot and main character prevents Elsewhere from being fully entertaining. It's certainly better than most of the crap out there, yet there's no need to go out of your way to see it.

So many direct-to-DVD films, especially horror-thriller ones are terrible that when something like Elsewhere comes along, some semblance of hope is restored. Writer-director Nathan Hope has constructed a mystery that while fairly easy to figure out rather quickly, still holds your interest throughout just to see how we get to where we think the story is going.A lot of credit has to go to the cast. As the intrepid, intelligent, and likable lead, Anna Kendrick, now most known because of her role in the Twilight films, does a great job of making us believe that she cares deeply about finding her missing friend. She portrays a sense of screen presence usually not seen from actors of her age. Based on her work here, she, instead of Kristen Stewart, should have been given the role of Bella in the aforementioned vampire saga. It'll be interesting to see where Kendrick's career goes because she definitely has potential.As the missing friend, Tania Raymonde has charisma, managing to make what easily could have been a despicably obnoxious character oddly likable, important because we actually care about discovering her fate. She and Kendrick share a nice rapport as well, almost instantly believable as best friends in spite of their varying personalities.Strong writing and a dynamic cast make Elsewhere definitely a place worth visiting.