Generally its really had to watch a ‘studio movie’ without already knowing much of the plot, what happens to who in certain scenes and also its hard to avoid seeing scenes from the film even if you are the type of person who wants to avoid trailers and marketing.  Its not easy to escape knowing too much about a big film before you sit down to watch it on the screen of your choice.  With smaller films (a.k.a indie films) its easier to not have details of the film already in your brains by the time you sit down, and press play or the lights dim and your film of choice begins. This is one of the reasons I love indie films so much. I can still go into a film knowing very little about it (by choice) and I can watching a story unfold before my eyes and not know where its going to go.

One of the latest of these indie ‘gems’ is 2024’s Amber Alert, directed by Kerry Bellessa who in 2012 also directed a film called Amber Alert, telling the tale of a group of friends who follow a car they believe is involved in an ‘Amber Alert’ I haven’t seen the 2012 film and didn’t know it existed until about twenty minutes ago when i was reading up just who directed 2024’s Amber Alert. The 2024 film is based on the 2012 film which in turn is about an actual real life alert status. 

Straight from the start of the movie, my heart was pounding and I realised I was watching a film that not only would I write about, but also one I would recommend to all my film fan friends who love tense thrillers.  As I started typing this article, I did go on about how much I love not knowing too much about a film and so It would be pretty bad of me to delve into the full storyline of Amber Alert and thus ruin the same experience that I had when watching the film. What I will say is that this is a total gem of a film. its not super high budget but doesn’t feel like a low budget film either. It looks the way a film like this should look. It has a minimal cast which is all it needs and those cast members are excellent in their roles. The use of sound design, the way the film it shot, and the way the film is edited heightens the tension to the high level that it needs. So if you love psychological thrillers where you are literally on the edge of your seat, then I do highly recommend Amber Alert. I did plan to watch another movie after Amber Alert last night but I opted to not. As whatever I watched afterwards likely would live up to the level of Amber Alert even though that second film might have been great too.