Bellflower is a film that I find extremely difficult to rate because, while watching it, I went from loving it to hating it and then back to loving it and so forth. I waited a few hours before writing this review so that I could reflect a little bit on what I had seen and try and come up with a satisfactory review. Bellflower is, to put it simply, the most hipster movie I have ever seen. It is incredibly pretentious at times, many of the scenes are filmed with a dirty lens, the entire movie looks slightly yellow, like you're looking through cheap, yellow sunglasses and the music is all done by bands that you've probably never heard of.…

Bellflower has a very distinctive look, think Instagram retro vibe, thanks to a unique camera set-up. This does not necessarily detract from the rest of the film but does highlight where else things are going awry on screen. Shot on a very low budget, you can tell where the money went and where it did not. The acting is pretty wooden throughout, characters lacking emotion or connection with each other, add to this some underwritten, unappealing, vacuous personality on display and you have nothing to really invest in.

On paper the plot seems intriguing (Mad Max obsessed friends are challenged by the intervention of one getting a girlfriend) and when I first caught a glimpse of the trailer I was…

Banal indie "realism" meets film school surrealism and more angst than a 15 year old mall goth; Bellflower really does not work. None of the characters feel real, as a result I don't care. Evan Glodell is a particularly bad actor. He seems like he's holding down the giggles every time he tries to be at ease with the girl, but it comes off as extremely insincere, like the character of Woodrow is putting up an act. This is a problem when he is the driving force of the story. I won't speak much on the plot twists in the second half of the film. They just kind of wasted my time so I won't waste yours writing about them.…

Mumblecore has always struck me as a quite condescending term for a film genre, added to the fact that it just sounds like a new wave of college rock. It’s a niche area of the industry that works well on the festival market and Bellflower has been one its darlings since appearing at Sundance earlier this year, collecting plaudits for its lo-fi yet stylistic approach. In all honesty it’s a Marmite film that will divide opinion; either the gritty approach pulls you into their world or you sit there frustrated at these slackers goofing around.

Director Evan Glodell also takes the reigns as writer and the main character of the piece, playing Woodrow, alongside his best friend Aiden (Tyler Dawson).…

Bellflower has a very distinctive look, think Instagram retro vibe, thanks to a unique camera set-up. This does not necessarily detract from the rest of the film but does highlight where else things are going awry on screen. Shot on a very low budget, you can tell where the money went and where it did not. The acting is pretty wooden throughout, characters lacking emotion or connection with each other, add to this some underwritten, unappealing, vacuous personality on display and you have nothing to really invest in.

On paper the plot seems intriguing (Mad Max obsessed friends are challenged by the intervention of one getting a girlfriend) and when I first caught a glimpse of the trailer I was…