It is a safe assumption that nearly everyone at some point in their life has tries to make a movie or has participated in one. Not all were big Hollywood blockbusters, many were children or teens just having fun with a videocamera trying to make something coherent out if their bushy-tailed excitement. These creations would usually entail bad acting, constantly changing lighting, and echoing sound, all the hallmarks of a bad no-budget movie. While most of these childhood attempts would go unfunded, Vibration shows us that we were saving many viewers from having to suffer through an unsupervised mess that we would have created.

Alexis has never been able to shake the depression and frustrations of losing her mom during her birth. One night while trying to communicate with her through the use of a spirit board, she is given the message to investigate the attic. Up there she finds a letter from her mom and a mysterious necklace that draws a cloaked figure towards her that proceeds to attack. After her father discovers her unconscious and takes her to the hospital she recovers but has lost her ability to speak. Moving to a new town they assume the worst is over but in her new school, there is a group of teens with strange abilities that have taken an interest in Alexis.

When making a film with no budget you take anyone you can get, meaning you will get many of your friends who are inexperienced but willing to help for free. While $10,000 for a feature film is a shoestring budget at best, you can make it go a long way with few locations and a small team of competent actors. What you don’t do is film a sprawling movie with multiple indoor and outdoor locations, 60 plus extras, and a team of people with speaking roles. Since they spread themselves so thin trying to go “all-out” we don’t have a single actor or actress that is competent, the plot and dialogue are awful, and every shot is flat and boring aside from some outdoor shots that were handled by someone with actual experience and talent.

With Vibration‘s dialogue being so awful, it may sound like a blessing that you can’t hear it over the music because the sound mixing is a mess.  However, I as a reviewer I don’t have the luxury of turning off a movie when it becomes apparent that the film isn’t going to improve in quality. So if I must sit through a bad movie, I would like to at least be able to hear the characters and not have to consider whether or not I should put on the subtitles.

If you have read any of my previous bad movie reviews, you will know that I am very adamant that new filmmakers owe it to themselves to attempt a short film first before tackling a feature. In the same way that you would learn to make a simple recipe before trying to make a four-course meal, a short will teach you to troubleshoot problems that you may have not foreseen in the production process. As it stands Vibration is nothing more than a cautionary tale in the same vein as the story of Icarus, a film that shot for the stars but only ended up as a burning mess on the ground.

2 out of 10