Film Review – Amber Alert

Co-writer/director Kerry Bellessa has been here before. In 2012, the helmer pieced together “Amber Alert,” going the found-footage, no-budget route with a tale of hot pursuit and everyday horrors. The feature didn’t work, becoming one of the worst films of its release year. Strangely, Bellessa is out to try again, returning to the material with a new take on the same premise of strangers in a car suddenly caught up in a child abduction emergency. The production has ditched cinema verité this time out, going dramatic with a new “Amber Alert,” with stars Hayden Panettiere and Tyler James Williams tasked with keeping things tense as an average day suddenly turns into race against time for their characters. Bellessa and co-writer Joshua Oram do a little better with the basics of the idea, yet, once again, it all falls apart in the end, with the tale beginning as a decently suspenseful manhunt, only to become a dreadful horror movie. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com