I am not a fan of horror-mysteries· Ii requires great skill to develop a plot and associated cinematography that allows for a suspension of disbelief and draws a person in· There are so few that are sucessful that I rarely watch the genre, and then only when strongly recommeded by friends or critics I respect· I pre-ordered Rift prior to its release based on the generally positive reviews by "those in the know"· Unfortunately, I was disappointed· Director Erlingur Thoroddsen used many overused plot devices common to horror-mystery films· Not far into the film, I was playing a little game with myself - "I bet this is what happens next"; and more often than not I bet correctly·
There is also my foreign-film bugaboo - captions· The font of the captions was way to small, with too little color contrast with the background, to be easily read· While captions are usually a necessity for foreign language films, they should not be so intrusive that the detract from the underlying film· In this case the very difficulty in reading them made them the distraction.