Read the book and don't bother with this film!

Rating: 4/10 (25 September 2008)

Fortunately for myself I read Alex Garland's novel prior to watching this film and having done so I am grateful that it was not the other way round. The scriptwriters for some reason decided to only loosely base the events of the novel into the film and as a result this comes across as a rushed and poorly directed piece of work.
What immediately springs to mind is the main character Richard, who is portrayed not as the stereotypical English traveller that is intended by Alex Garland but by the fresh faced American Leonardo Di Caprio who it seems never has a hair out of place in the entire course of the film. But what most annoys me about this movie is the complete omission of Jed, a pivotal character in the novel who is for some bizarre reason expelled from the script.
So many aspects of the film lack the novels breathtaking tempo, and the detailed descriptions that can only be put across in a book fail to come through in the screenplay. All in all this film is exactly what Alex Garland was looking to avoid when writing in the sense that it is pure Hollywood, with none of the characters coming through as believable people in the context of the situation they find themselves.