Safelight

Mainly, though, Safelight is just a California tourism travelogue — See Scenic Joshua Tree, Visit the Lighthouses of Southern California. Which we do, in 80 odd-but-not-odd-enough minutes.

Safelight squanders the efforts of a talented cast who are unable to lift the material beyond its clichés.

Aloupis is not untalented as writer or helmer. But his first outing is an unsurprising, paint-by-the-numbers picture.

A handful of solid performances and some subtle ’70s period detailing are hardly enough to recommend this flat, predictable drama.

First-time filmmaker Tony Aloupis, formerly frontman of the New Jersey rock band Shadows of Dreams, serves up Americana like a stale slice of apple pie.

A bland and utterly predictable melodrama desperate to hide itself as a deft character study.

Bad movies are common. Shockingly bad movies, ones that are so incompetently conceived and executed as to force one to question how they got made, are less so, despite what Angry Film Twitter might have you believe. Safelight is a jaw-droppingly bad movie, a film that doesn’t have characters or a plot.