Max Winslow And The House Of Secrets (cert 12A) will be in UK Cinemas from Friday 23rd October, with previews in Scotland and Northern England. Full Listings here
Director: Sean Olson
Writer: Jeff Wild (Screenplay)
Starring: Tanner Buchanan, Chad Michael Murray, Marina Sirtis, Jade Chynoweth, Jason Genao, Tyler Christopher , Sydne Mikelle
Plot: Five teens compete to win a mansion owned by an eccentric billionaire. The night takes a dark turn when they become trapped and are forced to face off against a super computer who has gone rogue.
Runtime: 1 Hour 38 Minutes
There may be spoilers in the rest of the review
Story: Max Winslow and the House of Secrets starts when eccentric billionaire Atticus Virtue (Murray) has disappeared from public spotlight, only to reappear offering five high school students, Max Winslow (Mikelle), Connor (Buchanan), Sophia (Chynoweth), Benny (Genao) and Aiden (Kelly) a chance to win the key to his mansion.
As the five students find themselves locked in the house, they must complete a series of tasks to get out of the house, which will see them get to know each other better, learning about the weaknesses they hide from the world.
Thoughts on Max Winslow and the House of Secrets
Characters – Max Winslow is the tech genius, she spends more time working of programs than making friends, seeing her social skills being difficult to maintain, only her skills could be what helps the students complete the tasks. Sophia is an Instagram addict that only cares about popularity, she is completely self-centred. Connor is the star lacrosse player that has been dealing with expectations for years, while he wants to escape this world, he works with Max through the house. Benny is a gaming addict that has skipped school classes for years and sees this a chance to get involved in a new style of gaming. Aiden is the school bully, he will always look to put people down, while dealing with his own troubles back home. The five characters are all very different and have a lot more below the surface of who they are seen as in school.
Performances – When we look at the key performances from the five younger stars, they do bring their characters to life, showing their strengths and weaknesses in their performances.
Story – The story here follows five high school students that get selected to take part in a competition to win a mansion from a billionaire tech genius, which will see them get to learn more about themselves. This story does have a sense of adventure with a series of challenges that must deal with weaknesses the characters are hiding from in life, while needing to learn to work together will give them a sense of getting out the problems they are facing. If you are going to compare the story to certain other movies, one you would need to look at would be ‘The Breakfast Club’ with the idea of the five from the same school, from different social groups.
Sci-Fi – The film brings the usage of technology to bring different ideas to life within the mansion, each one will play into the student’s life.
Settings – The film uses the high school to show us who the five students are, while once inside the mansion, we see something different behind every door, sometimes something we wouldn’t expect.
Special Effects – The effects are used to create different moments of confrontation the characters must go through, with the VR world Benny finds himself going through.
Scene of the Movie – Facing the flaws.
That Moment That Annoyed Me – We could have more from the certain characters working together to overcome their problems.
Final Thoughts – This is a smart look at needing to learn to change things growing up before it is too late, with an idea which will bring to life a Charlie and the Chocolate Factor idea, with the Breakfast Club message.
