User Reviews

I guess pun intended with the summary line. The idea is really good, but the movie itself isn't. It's a shame, that they couldn't make something out of it. The title gives away a little bit and of course you can imagine, that this won't be a regular Paintball game, that you will watch in this movie.

There are quite a few neat scenes, but especially one gimmick (where the camera uses a filter and therefor the picture you're seeing is "different") that it uses, wears off pretty quickly. Add to that, whiny characters (not all, but too many) and not that many different ones, so you could root for a particular character. It moves along too slow and any tension that gets build up, is destroyed pretty quickly. Some nice (gory) scenes won't help that either (not to mention, that some of them are shot through the aforementioned filter, which is really bad).

You will love or hate this one. The originality of this flick is also the way people disliked it. It's the first movie from director Daniel Benmayor. It's a good effort but of course he tried to combine other movies in his flick. It's a kind of survival flick with a mix of torture porn. So far so good but when it comes to the slaughtering he decided to do it from first person view. No probs but he showed it to us in the style predator/terminator but with colorless and negative viewing. So suddenly the blood turns white or grey and that doesn't work at all. It works for some shots but almost all killings are from the killer's point, a bit too much. It's not too gory, and there is some suspense but if he only had added the right color for the RED stuff well, it would have been much better. The storyline is very simple, some things aren't really explained but still, it's not that bad, one to see and probably forget.

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning

The premise behind this abysmal action thriller has a group of people going for a good old bit of paint ball, only to find themselves really fighting to stay alive as a barrage of real bullets are fired at them. But the characters are never developed or explored in any way, so it's impossible to care about any of them. Needless to say, there is no air of tension or suspense whatsoever, and the acting is so bad none of them have any life anyway, as though just running around shouting and screaming incoherently at each other gives them any life. Not that there was anything special to see there anyway, just the usual generic stereotypes typical for this genre. And here we have yet another film that hasn't learned the modern trend of shaking the camera around and darkening the lens is an off putting and annoying one rather than an endearing one. One to flee all round. *

First off, Paintball bets the farm that the viewer has never seen a movie before. If this is your first movie, then you're in luck, as it only gets better from here. Paintball's storyline is a combination of recycled, yet shockingly under-developed, themes and settings that attempts to create an air of mystery and horror by keeping the viewer in the dark. This is respectable approach, however, nothing ever makes sense in the movie… and not in the cool Donnie Darko way. It's like a bunch of 8th graders wrote a story in a half hour and never even bothered even coming for a reason why any character in the movie acts the way they do or any situation in the movie would be plausible. You can tell a movie stinks if the only way to move the story forward is for the characters to do the opposite of what any rationale or irrational human would do. Example 1A: People are dying and everyone still walks around inexplicably yelling with their paint guns cocked and loaded. I would think that even the dimmest bulb would realize that staying quite would be to their benefit.

Second, the movie is made horribly as well. You can tell that no shots were thought out ahead of time. The camera will follow someone, they'll drop a helmet, the camera will linger on the helmet, and the helmet will never be heard from again. I can see who a little misdirection can help a movie, but after repeatedly seeing useless visuals, you start to get the feeling that they were just letting the camera roll with hopes of making it work in the editing room. Also, the special effects are terrible. Every effect looks like it had a maximum budget of $5. I can watch a horrible movie and laugh along with the best of them (see American Ninja 3). However, they took so many short cuts in this movie, that there is nothing remotely redeemable about it. You can surely finding something to disappoint you that isn't 85 minutes long.

This gets two stars only because I've seen Gourmet Zombie Chef from Hell.

I don't exactly know anymore why I thought that "Paintball" could easily have been a cool and exciting survival/slasher movie when I rented it… Maybe because I went paintballing with a group of friends recently and you immediately link this game to adrenalin-rushing action and sportive kicks? Or perhaps because I have a tremendous weakness for equally obscure and similarly themed flicks from the 1980's, like "TAG: The Assassination Game", "Master Blaster" and "The Zero Boys"? All these flicks share the same plot, namely that a dim-witted but fun shootout game turns deadly when one or more participants start using real ammunition. None of them are to be considered genre classics, or even remotely great films for that matter, but they nonetheless provided pure and unpretentious entertainment. Entertainment is also exactly what I wanted to get out of "Paintball", but apparently that was too much to ask for … It's truly a dire effort, with an utterly dumb and implausible plot, and sadly also severely lacking gore, brutality and fast-paced suspense/excitement. "Paintball" is a European production – more specifically a Spanish one – and the creators obviously wanted to further exploit the worldwide impression that ALL Europeans are psychopathic butchers with a fetish for torturing Americans. Hence we're getting some kind of ridiculous mixture between the aforementioned 80's titles and Eli Roth's "Hostel". A bunch of people are in the back of a shaky truck, heading out to the remote Redwoods area and preparing themselves for a large-scaled and allegedly super-deluxe paintballing contest. Upon their first confrontation with another team already, it becomes clear that they are all defenseless puppets in much more sadistic and profitable game, run from an illegal control room somewhere in the city. It's kind of a dumb twist, if you ask me, but even more imbecilic than the plot are the totally bland and unremarkable characters. Each and every single member in the group of protagonists irritated me enormously, what with their whining and selfishness, and I literally wished for none of them to survive the ordeal. Director Daniel Benmayor also thought it would be a good idea to film all the killings from POV angle and through a sort of unclear brown camera filter. Result: the killings are hectically shot and extremely dull. There's nearly not enough bloodshed or cruelty for die-hard horror fanatics, let alone the admirers of the nowadays popular torture porn genre. The film doesn't take enough advantage of the sublime forestry filming locations and we don't learn enough about the actual villains that are running the show. "Paintball" a complete failure across all departments.

I'm reviewing this as a curiosity, possibly the worst I've ever seen. It's not one of those so bad it's good, more so bad that, yawn, who could ever care? So what are the problems? No story – but that's not unusual in a film like this. No characters – can also happen in this kind of softish horror, but there's usually someone, even if badly acted and paper-thin, to latch onto. Not here. Makes no sense – frequently a problem in horror of all kinds and here it's made worse by the fact that there's absolutely nothing to hook you in and pull you along. Unexplained stuff happens all the time - example: why not take the car with keys in it and how did we get from there to railroad tracks? Maybe if I'd cared even a little bit, I'd have paid more attention and just maybe made a bit more sense of it.

So what does happen? People run around a lot, rarely for any sensible reason. They shout a lot, usually all at the same time so you can't tell what any of them are shouting. The women (and only them) scream, gasp and sob a lot – not that unreasonable when nasty stuff starts up, but I suspect plenty of men would do the same in the unlikely event that real life could ever be remotely like this.

This movie is a perfect 1. There's nothing here worth seeing, the kind of thing I never get to see because I walk out/ switch channels/ throw the DVD in the garbage if even the opening 5-10 minutes are this bad. This time I made myself watch, waiting for something interesting to happen. It never did and I wasted 90 minutes of my life. Don't make the same mistake.

I really don't care for modern horror films that much. Many of them just seem so terrible that I usually don't bother with them. "Paintball" is yet another example of unoriginal and cliché horror. "Paintball" is another great example of not just a bad horror movie, but also a bad action movie.

8 people are dropped into the wilderness to compete in a paintball tournament. However, they come to realize that the game is more deadly than they thought as they find out that the enemies are using actual guns instead of paintball guns to hunt and kill them.

Firstly, my biggest problem with this movie is how badly written the characters are. There is literally no depth at all to any of them. I didn't care at all when they died off. In this case, however, I was actually looking forward for the characters to die because the movie was so bad, I was eager for it to end. Character development matters. Take these 3 words and tweet it to everyone who has ever thought of directing a horror movie.

Also, most of the characters are idiots. When one of them was being shot at, he ran right out into the middle of combat making him completely vulnerable just to get himself shot and killed. Also, some of the characters behave in ways no one would behave in in real life. When one of them was in trouble, instead of helping him, his friend just took his bulletproof vest and left him to die when he had more than enough time to save him. At one point in the movie, one of the other characters pushed someone into a trap causing her to die for no apparent reason whatsoever. There is no reason for him to do what he did. The movie tried to have him go insane but that was a very unrealistic and lazy way to kill off one of the characters. Also, one of the characters lost his mind and ran away from the group leaving himself vulnerable and he got himself killed because of his action. That was another unrealistic and lazy way to kill off a character. Also, when one of the characters picked up a machete and turned around, she stabbed one of her friends, killing her. That was yet another lazy and stupid way to kill off a character. Because of this, I was easily able to predict when each character was going to die because of their stupidity and how predictable the movie is. In short, this movie has some of the most idiotic and deficient movie characters ever put to screen.

As for the action, it's just typical gunfights and not much more. There was nothing impressive in any of them and despite a long take near the beginning, nothing else stood out whatsoever. What I really hated about them was the shaky camera. I have no idea why so many people still do this. Moviegoers hate it when movies have this. It distracts us from the movie and it gives me a headache. It is also bad cinematography in my opinion.

Like most low-budget, modern horror movies, the acting is garbage. The reason this is so common is because many good actors know better than to star in modern horror movies because they know that they will ruin their careers by doing so. Many horror movie directors are well aware of this so they hire those actors who are very untalented and take any role to get a paycheck. They hope that they will be successful enough to hire great actors. However, the movies they make are so bad that they usually sell poorly so their careers usually don't last very long. None of the actors in this movie are impressive at all and I felt that none of them gave a good performance.

Also, the ending left me more than underwhelmed. I was hoping for an explanation for what went on in the movie and I didn't get much of one. It barely contained any exposition and I was more confused in the end then I was in the beginning. Its ending is much too thin. The movie doesn't provide enough clues in order for me to be able to speculate a theory about what I think the origin of the area they were in is.

The only reason this doesn't get a 1/10 is that the premise is actually pretty good and creative for once. The movie shows some promise in the opening 10 minutes and it actually has an original concept. Also, it actually has a pretty decent long take. Unfortunately, the movie ruins any minimal hopes I had for it after 15 minutes.

In conclusion, if you don't mind the style over substance, idiotic characters, and unoriginal and poorly-executed action sequences and if you just like watching senseless gun-battles then this movie is for you. However, if you don't like that then you're likely going to find this to be yet another worthless horror movie which is completely inferior to dozens of other classic action, war, and horror movies out there which are actually well made. My tip is to avoid this at all costs.

Some whiny and annoying card-board characters are dropped off in the field where the games with the opposing team will be held.After some paintball sessions an unknown hunter begins to kill them using real ammo."Paintball" is a highly derivative survival flick which reminded me "The Zero Boys" or "Masterblaster"(both flicks from 80's).The characters are annoying and not developed,the plot is predictable and there is plenty of clichés.The cinematography is shaky and the killings shot via grey night vision quickly become irritating.If you want a good survival flick check out "Rituals","Deliverance" or "Hunter's Blood".Unfortunately "Paintball" is one to avoid.5 out of 10.

This film was awful, there is no denying that fact and i'm going to get straight to the point. I have seen a lot of films in my day and this has to be one of the worst. The acting was terrible, it was horribly written. Now the storyline was okay but still very bad. It never got into anything special, it only stayed on that borderline of story lines that we have seen in so many films now. The writer definitely had something that could have been great but the it just never took off in to a good story. I have said a lot of bad point in this review but the film did have some good scenes but other than that it was a really basic film. So with all that in mind i decided to give this a 2 out of 10 just for the simple fact that it was a good idea and there were some good scenes in it.

When I sat down with my six kids aged between 3-12 I had no idea what to expect. I certainly was not expecting it to be such a adrenaline fuelled, heart stopping masterpiece. I am not ashamed that I shed a tear, as did the rest of my family, at the end of this movie. No one can stay dry eyed throughout this movie. This film depicts a chilling yet oh so real account of the dangers of paint balling and I can guarantee you that now my eyes have been opened to this nightmarish past-time neither me nor my children will be going paint balling in the near future. There is no doubt about it that this is the best film ever to come from the awe inspiring mind of visionary director Daniel Benmayor and I can tell you now there is some stiff competition. If you want a film which will make you feel sad, scared, happy, confused, horny, overwhelmed, jealous and surprised then Paintball is most definitely the film for you. Please watch this film and spread the message that this film conveys. Thank you for taking time to read my review. From our most humble and obedient servant Michael J White

I'm still waiting for the day that I'll break my duck and participate in a paintball game, especially if going back for in-camp training every year isn't enough that I'll want to wield a rifle with paint ammunition, and go around fragging peers or strangers in the opposite team. Best played with a big group of friends (or against people you dislike), this sport is picking up momentum, and specialized shops selling paintball gear have been sprouting up, giving indication of its popularity.

If only the cost of the game would go down, or if the terrain could be a little more challenging, like this one in the film Paintball, set in a fictional Redball Woods, touted as Europe's largest renegade paintball field, which would give infantry junkies a run for their money in terrain topology, with plenty of space for section movement and the application of section movement in order to organize and take out the enemy. But that's a dream playground, and as its advertisement touts, you have the power to choose whether to live or die.

The horror here, besides the fact that it's a film that failed to exploit its potential and chances, is of course for someone to have a weird sense of humour, and decided to substitute their paint ammunition, for real rounds meant to kill. Imagine the odds when all you have is a weapon firing paint, and the other party having a weapon meant to kill. Then there's this mysterious, savage player who doesn't seem to play for either side, from whom we adopt the POV from, and behind his thermal mask we see the bloody atrocities that he gets himself into when dispatching innocent players.

The story is pretty much standard, introducing us to the group of strangers who have signed up to participate in the game, and have to work together with great difficulty when they know that they're in for deep, deep trouble. It's like an amalgamation of Battle Royale and Hostel, where rich dudes sign up for something, only to find the tables turned and it's a fight for survival, with every man for himself. Their mission is to go from checkpoint to checkpoint and pick up stuff that they could use, such as bullet proof vests and a real machete, together with constant bickering as to who gets to use what.

You can't help but to apply horror film sensibilities in wondering which caricature gets to be killed how, and in what order. In fact, with their lack of unison, this is something of a given, and with characters who don't appeal, you'll just switch off automatically. The other drawback is of course the story by Mario Schoendorff being really lacklustre, with director Daniel Benmayor not being able to bring out any sense of tension or thrills, having everything played out in a rather flat manner, despite the slight revelation toward the end which was a little to late to make any impact, coming across more like a sick joke played by Redball Woods.

The only redeeming grace that stood out from the bad acting, caricatures and weak story, is the occasional flashes of brilliance in its initial long tracking shot of pandemonium. And that had given the film a lot of promise, only to be let down right after. I was impressed by how much was going on with people running, firing, taking cover, paint ammunition flying, with the entire mayhem played out for a constantly moving camera without breaking into a cut. I had expected more, but as the body count rose, the brilliance unfortunately diminished. The money shot was at the front, and was just about the best thing in the entire film.

And the final nail that sealed the coffin shut, was the inexplicable final scene. I have no idea what gives, and it could have ended one scene before, though conventional but at least it provides the film a proper closure rather than the hokey open ended finish that just made it look plain silly. I suppose with more experience under their belts, the filmmakers would know how to bring out the best of a story, and know when to pull the plug when things go awry, rather than to prolong the misery. Strictly for paintball fans, but even then you'd rather prefer to be playing the game, than to watch a horrible horror film about it.

PAINTBALL is another attempt at survival horror which reminds one a little of the likes of WILDERNESS although this is far, far worse. It seems to be a British film that was made and filmed in Spain, and despite the presence of British actors in the cast list the whole thing sounds like it was dubbed in post production; the voices feel false and unconnected to the characters.

It's an entirely dull effort, one that fails to fulfil the basics like crafting likable characters or indeed setting up much in the way of a story. The tale is about a group of paintballers who find themselves being picked off one by one by a maniac using a real gun. There's little more to it than that, and the whole thing is an excuse to show off some violent effects. Sadly the cinematography has the whole 'greyed out' look to it and the kill scenes are very poor; this is so amateurish that it's not worth watching.

Given the synopsis for this movie, I can't really claim to have any particular big expectations for the movie. But having seen it, I can now say that the movie was actually better than I had expected. ANd while that is positive, I will say that the movie wasn't particularly extraordinary though.

The story is about a group of people who go to a remote forest to compete in a game of paintball. But when one of the contestants is shot dead by a live ammunition round, the game changes dramatically, and it becomes an actual game of life and death.

"Paintball" was shot mostly with a hand-held camera, to give the audience the impression of being on the battlefield in the forest. While the intention is good, I hate hand-held camera movies. I don't pay money to watch something that I can film myself. Granted it was just $2, but still I want a properly filmed movie to watch.

It should be said that the characters were generic and totally devoid of any characteristics and personalities. Which was a shame, because you don't really differentiate one from the other. So you don't care one bit about these essential faceless characters.

Story-wise then "Paintball" was quite average. You know what will happen and there are absolutely no surprises along the way.

If you have an hour and a half to waste, and got absolutely nothing better to watch, give "Paintball" a go for a no-brainer movie. But don't get your hopes up for anything grand. Other than that, there is really no selling point to this particular movie.

A group of eight men and women are secreted to a woodsy location. Let out of a rickety truck, they are revealed to be in a game of "Paintball". Given assigned roles (called positions by a robotic announcer), they expect to be battling against a like team for warrior fun, but it quickly turns deadly. A wobbly camera follows events, which are not as thrilling as promised. Unlike Richard Connell's similar "The Most Dangerous Game", there is very little story here. Another problem is character development; there is none, so it's difficult to care what happens to any of these people you see being followed around by the shaky cameras.

** Paintball (4/24/09) Daniel Benmayor ~ Brendan Mackey, Jennifer Matter, Patrick Regis, Iaione Perez

Think of Eli Roth's "Hostel" meets Nico Mastorakis' "The Zero Boys" and you have the low-budget horror action hybrid "Paintball". What the story sets up should have been a lot better than what actually eventuated, as in the end it was a chaotic muddle of frenetically noisy action and mind-numbing characters running around remote woodlands letting their instinctive and primal urges kick in. At times it was simply a whole lot commotion attached with jumpy hand-held camera-work. This really made it quite nauseating in trying to follow the on-going action and gathering the plot details from its variable script was just as frustrating. The story follows that of eight adrenaline junkies taking part in a game of paintball in a forest, but when one of them ends up being killed by a live round. Now they realise it might not just be all fun and games, but a fight for survival in what is the ultimate rush. But that wasn't advertised!? So by that, I guess it should be easy to track. It pretty much throws you right into it and keeps a fast pace throughout. However what the rushed narrative throws up only seems to complicate matters, opening up plot threads and intriguing ideas to only touch on them with minor insight and then to abruptly close things off with little fulfilment. The hunter is kept unknown, toying with the victims and us only seeing glimpses of the foe as his face is kept hidden from the camera creating a creepy ambiguity. Although we get numerous POV shots in thermal imaging which does take away from the deaths, because it's not clearly shown. Therefore it's kind of brutal and organic, but without being overly explicit. The performances are all over the place, either being annoying or disagreeable but the likes of Jennifer Matter, Patrick Regis and Brendan Mackey do stand out from the stereotypical lot.

"To live or not live. It's simply up to you?"

Director Daniel Benmayor's film Paintball is an exceptional motion picture experience of infinite power. The environment he creates is dark, forbidding, and utterly terrifying. The sense of helplessness the characters feel as they fight for their lives with worthless weapons from a game becomes our own in a very personal way as the tension builds. The impersonal, merciless threats that stalk these innocent players is overwhelming and the desperation we feel with them is nearly unendurable. The pace never slackens as they are pursued relentlessly in a nightmare scenario of complete surrealism. It is nothing less than brilliant film making and unlike anything else you are like to encounter on the screen. The shattering climax is heart rendering in its explosiveness and will leave you absolutely stunned and breathless.

This exciting film contains stunning fights scenes and chases that illuminate the full-blown struggles with a plethora of engaging set pieces on the combats in which the action runs here and there . Exciting manhunt set against spectacular scenery in which a bunch of young urban workaholics sign up for a weekend of paintballing to have some adventure and to the adrenaline begins to flow . The team (Brendan Mackey , Jennifer Matter , Patrick Regis , Neil Maskell , Iaione Perez , Claudia Bassols) is split into two groups , each player is equipped with supplies to last the weekend , a paintball weapon , paint bullets and maps . The winners will be the team that wipes out their opponents and completes the circuit . As the snipers pin them down in a hail of paint . But the adrenaline-filled entertainment soon turns into a merciless chase , in which they become the prey and the hunter shoots live ammunition not paint . It is no longer a game ; but then commands the strongest law , and when rules have changed it turns into a lethal pursuit . Later on , the battle-hardened participants take on each other , including deadly traps , being ambushed , and killed one by one . Hunted down like prey in a deadly game , the teams face a desperate struggle for survival . There's nothing like a brush with death to make you feel alive .

Bloody and violently flick with overwhelming fights and nice production values set in deep forest , ravines , caves and obstacle-ridden trekking paths . It is reasonably well paced and turns out to be a long roller-coaster pursuit and relentless hunt . It is packed with noisy action , gritty adventure , thrills , violent shootouts and spectacular outdoors . The strong confrontation in which only rules the law of the jungle , is set against strong environment , mountains and hazardous trails . The movie has great action sequences well staged with stylish and vitality , thrills , and results to be entertaining but repetitive . Cameraman photographs a stirring atmosphere by means of shaky camera over shoulder and videotape . Several action scenes are outstanding with spectacular action images and thrilling fights . It also results to be surprisingly gory , including , stabbing , slitting , writhing in agony , along with a handful of extremely violent and breathtakingly gory scenes . It's a thunder stuff with an unknown cast , they spend most of it running through the forests , hills , mountains , being tracked , chased and escaped . Unfortunately, on small house screens much of the splendor will be lost , to be seen on big screen.

Colorful cinematography by Juán Azpiroz , reflecting splendidly impressive landscapes filmed in mountains of Castellterçol , Marganell , Collbató , Aiguamúrcia, Barcelona, Arnes , Tarragona, Catalonia , where the filmmaker also shot ¨El Bruc¨ . Furthermore , it displays an atmospheric and thrilling musical score by Xavier Capellas . The flick was finely produced by the chairman of Filmax Productions , Julio Fernandez along with his brother Carlos Fernandez as executive producer , they're two successful producers and experts on terror genre , producing a lot of hits , such as ¨The machinist¨, ¨Rec ¨1¨, 2¨ and ¨3¨ , ¨Fragiles¨, ¨Darkness¨, ¨El perfume¨ , ¨The nun¨ . The motion picture was professionally directed by Daniel Benmayor , though has some flaws and gaps . He is a good professional , a nice filmmaker who has directed a few films as ¨Bruc , El Desafío¨ (2010) and has been hired by Hollywood , where he has realized ¨Tracers¨ with Taylor Lautner and Marie Avgeropoulos . This ¨¨Paintball¨ is rated 5.5/10 , passable .

While undertaking a paint-ball game, a team of players finds itself under attack by a maniacal killer intent on turning the game into a bloodbath and must try to survive against the madman in order to leave the game alive.

What initially could've been a real drag-out effort instead turns into a really disappointing and barely worthwhile effort that contains only a few scant positives. One of the main problems here is the fact that the kills are some of the lamest ever devised for a horror film, which really hurts the killer here tremendously. Those kills either tend to be straight gunshots from extreme range or more traditional kills done through the killer's electronic visor, reducing them to a CG-style image that appears to be a mix between night-vision and infrared style with the tones and appearance used. This is an utterly irritating tactic that comes on during what should be the film's key moments when you want to be able to get the full effect, resulting in bloodless kills that are also impossible to make out. The twist with the killer is fairly novel but lacks a lot of class and doesn't really go anywhere with it, keeping a lot hidden and not exploring a potentially good idea to its fullest. The idea of a killer in a paintball tournament should've been a lot of fun without knowing who to trust or if the game should be called off which is where this one should've worked, but instead the concept of the organization being behind it all given to us here is just quite lame as for what they're after or the purpose of this one to set off the problems in here. There's some really enjoyable parts to this one which makes for an occasionally entertaining time, starting with the stalking at the end guided along by the helpful attendant which comes off a lot more tense and chilling here than expected during the forest segment with the preceding events fueling the paranoia, engaging in plenty of rather fun escape sequences and getting into the compound to add in the heat-vision tactics to great effect for once as the brawling is quite more active than expected and really putting out the creepiness of the corporation is fantastic as it brings about the great scene. Still, though, this really doesn't come close to matching the even-more impressive beginning as it really delivers a lot of really good paint- ball shoot-'em-up action to get things going as this gets right in the heat of the battle and their tactics come off incredibly well that showcases this all to great effect. As well, the later scenes of the group undergoing the strategies while aware of the killer after them is pretty enjoyable with some suitably realistic chaos and panic spread in. However, the flaws are just too present and overbearing for this one to really overcome.

Rated R: Graphic Language and Graphic Violence.