Safelight

Name: Safelight
Director: Tony Aloupis
Released: 2015

Synopsis

A teenage boy and girl discover a renewed sense of possibility as they go on a road trip to photograph lighthouses along the California coast.

50
Movie Nation
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.
40
The Hollywood Reporter
Safelight squanders the efforts of a talented cast who are unable to lift the material beyond its clichés.
38
Philadelphia Inquirer
Aloupis is not untalented as writer or helmer. But his first outing is an unsurprising, paint-by-the-numbers picture.
30
Los Angeles Times
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.
30
Variety
A handful of solid performances and some subtle ’70s period detailing are hardly enough to recommend this flat, predictable drama.
25
The Playlist
A bland and utterly predictable melodrama desperate to hide itself as a deft character study.
12
RogerEbert.com
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.