BODIES is your usual low rent, low hope indie thriller, shot on the streets of Philadelphia. The main character is a writer who becomes obsessed with the comings and goings of his neighbour, but the protagonist himself is entirely passive. The rest of the story is limited in the street and contains barely any kind of content; the acting is okay, but the scripting is poor indeed and virtually unfilmable in my mind.

The best way to describe this "movie" is that it's about an alien from another planet named Terry who supposedly only has had experience with the human race through watching murder mysteries. When he comes to Earth and moves into his new apartment, he immediately decides to investigate the neighbor woman because apparently that's what humans do, right? What's frustrating is the movie isn't actually about an alien. He's just a boring character portrayed by a strange actor who was directed by someone who might be an alien. At least, the director could be an alien to movies or to how human beings interact with one another. Either way, the actions of the characters are so illogical that it seems alien to anyone who has ever interacted with another person before.Terry moves into a new apartment and immediately stalks the woman next door because he heard she was a photographer of provocative subject matter (i.e., naked girls). He is socially awkward, creepy and lacks any kind of personality. There is a scene where Terry sits next to his door in the dark, staring blankly ahead as he listens to hear if the neighbor girl is coming home. Before he meets her, Terry does research on her for no apparent reason. In his first interaction with her, he quizzes her on the most intimate details of her life without even having said hello first.You would assume this is the crafting of an interesting villain character. Unfortunately, Terry appears to be our hero and all of this setup falls on the poor choices of the writer, actor and director. How so? When Terry plays twenty questions when first meeting his frantic neighbor, Jane, she actually replies with the most detailed and expositional responses no person would ever give to a complete stranger. We end up knowing way more about her than about Terry. In fact, Jane is actually the hero of the film, yet we follow Terry the whole time. Later on, a character actually asks what Terry has to do with anything. Not surprisingly, the audience is left asking the same question.This movie is baffling because it seems like the filmmakers know what they're doing. It's well paced and very well edited with adequate production design, makeup and wardrobe. Sure, the camera work, lighting and sound affects appear a tad shoddy, but the directing of the actors and the writing of the script scream "amateur." Not amateur like, "I love movies and I'm going to make one on my own." It's amateur as in, "I've seen a movie once and I'll try that." What's strange is that a couple of the characters in the movie are actual movie fanatics who complain about the state of modern cinema. It's an obvious commentary from the filmmakers, which is odd considering this movie doesn't seem like it was made by anyone who actually knows anything about movies.

What I was hoping for when I decided to watch this movie was something in the style of "Disturbia", of course with a lower budget but the plot sounded kind of similar.Now that I've seen it I'm a bit uncertain what to make of it. "Bodies" is surely not the worst movie, it has a coherent plot and is not really predictable plus it makes you feel uneasy at times but that sadly more in terms of social situations than of thrilling horror.To be honest, the only mostly normal character to me seemed to be Molly, everyone else was just behaving in ways that make you wonder. A "normal guy" that instantly starts to stalk his neighbor to a point where he randomly vandalizes a house in the woods while at the same time ignoring his girlfriend to have a crush on his neighbor, a police officer that shoots someone out of the blue, a guy that more or less randomly kills people, all of that doesn't seem to add up. Unfortunately I wasn't so pleased with the acting at times neither.Still I can understand that people could be entertained by this movie and consider it better than I did. Personally I just think that there are other films within this genre that seem to make a bit more sense and make it easier to identify with their characters.