Sometimes movies with potential try hard and fall just short of being good. In some ways "The Traveler" falls into that category. In other ways it falls so short of what should be considered film that it's downright sad.<br /><br />Let me start by saying that if this is a student film, it should probably get a decent grade. It's story had potential, the effects are fairly good given the budget, and it genuinely made me (a real horror fan) cringe from time to time. The problems? First of all, the production values are are poor. Extremely poor. In fact I think I've made home movies that took longer to produce. Half of the fun of watching horror flicks can be the bad production, but this is just too much. Then you have to deal with the "actors". I use quotations because I'm fairly sure the makers of this film just asked friends and possibly strangers on the street to be in this movie. It's so bad that it makes a somewhat promising story and makes it almost unbearable to watch.<br /><br />Why the 2 extra stars? As I said, the story isn't bad (think TV show "Survivor" meets your gruesome untimely death by way of creepy British guy)...it's just executed very poorly. Add another star for some practical special effects that were more than I expected (probably where the entire budget went for this film if it had one to begin with). All of this gives you a finished product that, if more time and a little more money had went into it, could easily have been a real contender for a good horror flick. I really wanted to like this piece of indie horror...I just couldn't.