ATM Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		2.0

ATM Blu-ray Movie Review

Overdrawn at the Creativity Bank

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater July 24, 2012

Unless you're Alfred Hitchcock, the single-location thriller is notoriously difficult to pull off. The plotting needs to be airtight, the performances have to command attention—essentially making up for the lack of visual variety—and the location itself needs to be fertile with dramatic possibilities. In ATM, twenty-three-year-old director David Brooks—straight out of film school and, whaddaya know, the son of My Big Fat Greek Wedding producer Paul Brooks—makes it abundantly clear that he's no Master of Suspense. To be fair, the blame should be shared with writer Chris Starling, whose script is built almost entirely out of implausibilities and unlikely coincidences and utter pointlessness. Starling seems to have a thing for claustrophobia-inducing settings; his last screenplay was for the fairly successful 2010 Ryan Reynolds film Buried, which preyed on our collective fear of being alive and six feet under. Set prosaically in a standalone banking vestibule in a deserted parking lot, ATM is immediately less memorable, but its main problems are plot holes and continuity errors, unresolved possibilities and a hulking villain whose motivations are left ambiguous in a bad way. Is it a horror film? Sort of. Is it a recession-themed thriller? Maybe. Is it the kind of B-movie ridiculousness that makes you alternately slap your forehead, roll your eyes, and yell at the characters—and filmmakers—for being idiots? Absolutely.

The Hurt Locker's Brian Geraghty plays David, a meek stock portfolio manager who, when the film opens a week before Christmas, is apologizing over the phone to a disgruntled client whose retirement savings disappeared because of "the economy." David feels bad—that's how we know he's A Good Guy—whereas his jackass work buddy Corey (Josh Peck) couldn't give a rip. Straight off, the dialogue feels dippy and over-obvious, with Corey doling out lines like "Life's about choices, man. One bad one can ruin every good one you've ever made." There might as well be a blinking neon light behind him that reads in all-caps, THIS IS THE MOVIE'S THEME.

The Starkweather Financial holiday party is that night, and Corey is egging David on to finally ask out Emily (Sex in the City 2's Alice Eve), a pretty blond coworker who's leaving finance to work for a non-profit. David gets up the nerve and arranges to drive Emily home—because life's about choices, man—but Corey, in an oblivious dickwad move, demands that David drive him home as well. Oh, and he also insists that they all grab pizza first. Why doesn't David tell the cockblocker to shove off and get a taxi? Because, hello, the film needs him to make one wrong choice that will ruin every good one he's ever made.

The unbelievable plot points pile up like elephant droppings. First, Corey remembers that the pizza joint only takes cash, necessitating a stop at an out- of-the-way ATM building—the sort where you need to swipe your debit card to enter—in an enormous empty parking lot. Then, David parks unreasonably far from the entrance in order to "punish" Corey, a barely buyable action that's necessary for the rest of the film to work. By the time it's revealed that Corey's account is overdrawn and that David—with Emily in tow—has to come in and pull out money for him, it's clear that the script has no qualms about arranging its characters though baldly machinated means. Did I mention that David's cell phone battery is uncharged? Or that the car lock on his keychain fob is broken? These people just don't act realistically, and nothing about their situation seems natural; they do what they do—and what happens to them happens to them—solely to wind up the clockwork of the story.

Which bring us to the nameless aggressor who suddenly appears, standing motionless outside this glorified box of a bank, peering in, his face obscured in the shadows of a furry parka hood. "Maybe he just wants to use the ATM," Corey suggests, but that theory is put to rest when the hooded fiend bashes in the face of some poor innocent bystander who just happened to be taking his dog for a walk through the parking lot. So, now the three financiers are essentially trapped inside, slowly freezing in the December cold, unsure what this silent menace wants. Can't they just make a run for it, you ask? Well, yeah, they could, but gosh darn it to heck, the car is a good seventy five yards away. Can't Emily or Corey use their phones to call the cops, you might then justly inquire? Here's the thing; Emily's Blackberry is in the car, and apparently Corey doesn't even have one. A security guard making his rounds eventually shows up, but you can make one guess what happens to him.

Suffice it to say that yon Hooded One continues to torment the three coworkers, who debate what to do, make unsuccessful attempts at escape, and have the expected finger-pointing arguments with one another over who, exactly, is to blame. There are a few WTF-inducing thrills here—wait, ol' Hoodie's gonna pump water into the building to try and drown them out?—but much of what transpires beggars belief and approaches unintentional comedy. I say approaches because the film never reaches so-bad-it's-good status. It's just bad. It doesn't help that Josh Peck overplays his Corey into the kind of insufferable character who makes you want to turn the movie off entirely. If I was trapped in an ATM box with him I'd probably flip out too.

What irks most about the film is that for the majority of its runtime it leads us on with what are ultimately red herrings about who the killer may be. Is it the guy who lost his retirement stash? Is it another male coworker whom Corey continuously insults at the office party? ("Close your legs," he says, "I can see your vagina.") Or is it some random dude who, for reasons unexplained, enjoys trapping and harassing late night visitors to isolated ATMs? Its like the film is teasing us with a big twist that never comes. Well, there is one final twist, but like everything else in the plot, it'll leave you scrunching up your eyebrows and asking really?And I'm not sure what the point is to the whole bankers-trapped-in-a-bank angle. If Starling and Brooks are putting forth some sort of social commentary here—some they had it coming metaphor about Wall Street types getting their just desserts—it's not developed enough to make much of an impact.

ATM Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Shot with the ever-popular Red One camera and transferred capably to Blu-ray, there are no real issues with the film's digital-to-digital 1080p/AVC encode. Given that the film takes place entirely at night, there are a few moments when you might notice a slight uptick in low-light source noise, but otherwise, you're looking at a clean, clear, presumably faithful-to-intent presentation. No DNR. No obvious edge enhancement. No banding, macroblocking, aliasing, or other compression woes. Though some of the longer shots can be a bit soft, the image is satisfyingly sharp throughout, especially when we're inside the ATM building, where the hard florescent lights give the camera more-than-adequate illumination to stop-down and capture fine high definition detail in the actors' faces and clothing. Color has been given an appropriately chilly blue cast while looking otherwise realistic, with dense but not overpowering blacks, good contrast, and highlights that rarely ever blow out. There's not much fault to find here, but then again, in the case of ATM, that old adage about polishing a turd certainly seems true.

ATM Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

IFC/MPI has given us two audio options, the default lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround mix and an uncompressed Linear PCM 2.0 stereo fold- down. If you have a surround sound-capable set-up, you'll definitely want to stick with the former, as the rear channels put out quiet but consistent ambience, from traffic noise and party chatter in the first act to the icy wind, gushing water, and bleeping alarms that dominate the soundscape for the rest of the film. There is an original score by David Buckley (The Town), but since I neglected to jot down anything about it in my notes, it obviously didn't make much of an impression. (Then again, not much in the movie does.) I do recall the subwoofer kicking in on occasion to underscore the action with a thick rumbling, and that's effective enough, I guess. As for dialogue, it's always cleanly recorded and easily understood, balanced effortlessly at the top of the mix. For those that need or want them, note that the disc includes optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles.

ATM Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Behind the Scenes (1080p, 7:58): "This is a completely realistic scenario that can happen to anyone," says actor Brian Garaghty. Riiiiiight. Also features interviews with the other stars, writer Chris Starling, director David Brooks, and his producer dad.
• Trailer (1080p, 2:05)

ATM Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

As exciting as a deposit slip and as as suspenseful as the inputting of a PIN, ATM is the dumbest masked-killer movie I've seen in ages. (Oh crap, it's a guy in a parka! said no one, ever.) Director David Brooks and screenwriter Chris Starling bungle the single-location thriller with unswerving carelessness, following a hole-filled plot to thoroughly unsatisfying conclusion. Tech specs on IFC's Blu-ray release are good, but a purchase of this disc would be a lost investment. Put your money elsewhere.