Watchable, but not great

Rating: Null/10 (30 September 2012)

I'll preface the review with the fact that I did not read the book(s) it was based on. While, an avid reader, it's normally not the type of book I'd pick up with any great interest. However, the movie trailer got my attention as did the premise behind it. Not having heard of the book(s), it struck me as a more unique and interesting story than the usual fare offered in movies these days.
The movie wasn't terrible. It has issues, though. Without nitpicking at the little things, the biggest short-coming is the lack of character development. It's hard to get emotionally invested in any of them because there's very little effort made (or maybe just very little success) to give the characters any real depth or characteristics that a viewer can really identify with. There are just too many holes in the story.... How the world got where it got and so on...
So, in short.... The movie was watchable, but it obviously fell very short of what it could have been. I really feel that they should've gone with better, more extensively detail in their adaptation of the book and taken the R-rating that would obviously have come with it. The teenage drama they tried to make believable just didn't work given the context (even their version of it) and the lack of character development.
While I can't call this type of movie "entertainment" given the context, it does make one think and question the depths of depravity people can fall to.... Is such a world so far-fetched? Might not be...