My Review of 'Rim of the World'

Rim of the World is a little bit of an odd film. I totally get what they were trying to do with this movie, so maybe I'm getting a little too old to be watching these types of movies. Still, the nostalgia factor of movies of my past kind of make me have a weak spot for this movie.

This movie was one of those Netflix exclusive movies that didn't get a lot of publicity, and just showed up on the list of things to watch. Netflix's algorithms have been getting pretty good at hooking me in lately.

This movie is about four outcast kids joining together to take on aliens that are about to kill all humans. This concept isn't totally original. There was a pretty big film by the name of Super 8 by J.J. Abrams that came out years ago, that put outcast kids together to fight aliens. I was one of the few that actually enjoyed Super 8, so I didn't think it would be bad to watch a knock-off version of the movie.

The young actors for the most part are actually pretty good. I found it kind of weird that the Chinese character from China, played by Miya Cech, couldn't speak throughout the whole movie, but when she decides to reveal that she can speak English, she speaks with no accent at all. This is not a movie that was made to be believable.

There are a number of situations in which they're conveniently saved by certain plot devices. A ton of scenes can be predicted five to 10 minutes before they even happen. Again, this is supposed to be a kids movie. They wanted to make a The Goonies-like adventure with aliens, much like Super 8 tried to do.

This movie has pretty much every formulaic scenario you can think of in an alien invasion, so adults, be warned there will be a lot of familiar scenes. They're not even cleverly giving homage to any particular film, either. There is maybe an Aliens homage here and there, but it's nothing as clever as you'd see in something like Stranger Things.

The special effects are subpar-to-pretty-decent, for a low budget movie. You'll see that they saturated the colors for the movie, so that the special effects aren't so obviously bad. It's a clever little tactic to keep the mood of the movie and help out the special effects, but at times, it can look really out of place. Sometimes it looks like they're in a studio stage and someone used Photoshop quickly to edit the colors of the scene.

I say all this as an adult, but if I look at this movie through the eyes of a kid, I can see how this movie would be great fun. There's some PG swearing, and heroic kids banding together to take down evil. Kids today aren't familiar with older films that have made better versions of this type of film. They also watch movies with more naivety and innocence. They don't have the cynicism that adults do, so they can enjoy this movie a lot more.

Overall, I would say if you're an adult watching this movie, you will want to shut it off close to the beginning of the movie. I have a soft spot for movies like The Goonies, Super 8, and Stranger Things, so I continued with the movie and was fairly entertained by the middle of the movie. The beginning and end were probably the worst parts of the movie. As an adult, I would have to give this movie a four out of 10. Again, this would be graded differently as a kid. If I was a kid, I think I would rate this movie maybe a seven out of 10. Even as a kid's movie, it's not so great because there are so many great kid movies out there nowadays. All that to say, this can be enjoyed by kids.