tl;dr Wanted to love it, struggled to finish it.
The good: For an indie production, it was well shot, with good audio. It is, in theory, a documentary about the different claims regarding the various "Montauk projects" discussed in paranormal media.. It interviews several notable personalities involved in the body of Montauk lore, without derision, or apparent positive bias. It wasn't actually the 4 hours I thought I had been watching it.
The less good: Finding a well executed documentary on any fringe topic, is like finding a unicorn, washing your car for you. Those that achieve any degree of success as a cohesive and engaging narrative provide a context for the different interviews, use recreation to support that, and give you a good story. I was hoping for a good overview of all of the extraordinary claims about secret projects that crossed the border into science fiction at Montauk from the last 6 decades. You can either believe all of the tales told about Montauk in the alternative literature, or treat them with complete skepticism. The middle ground as a viewer is to treat it as folktales. I wasn't expecting Montauk Chronicles to prove anything to me. I was expecting to leave it with a decent grasp of the stories related to it, and a sense of how the subjects giving interviews had contributed to its lore. That scope could have been sweeping, or parochial. I had heard or seen interviews with the main three subjects, and have a passing familiarity with tales related to Camp Hero that are a staple of what I'll call the genre. If it wasn't for that, I wouldn't have had the slightest clue as to why I should care about their stories, and what those stories really were. I find it tragic honestly. Regardless of your opinion of anyone's authenticity Bielek, Nichols, and Swerdlow, have been contributing to Montauk lore for decades, and what ended up on screen offers scant satisfaction. Those guys won't be around forever, and once they're gone they will become part of the great continuum of rehashed references in future works, and it will become increasingly difficult to know those stories in their words. Aside from that, a lot of beach scenes, a lot of dash cam, and recreations that didn't help me understand anything. And they were interminable.I have no issue with recreation, or a measure of theatrical license, these were just un-needed.
For aggressive skeptics, if it had been a better production, you could hate it more, for better reasons. For true believers who won't criticise anything in paranormal media ever, I am obviously a disinformation agent, and my review should be discarded.
The good: For an indie production, it was well shot, with good audio. It is, in theory, a documentary about the different claims regarding the various "Montauk projects" discussed in paranormal media.. It interviews several notable personalities involved in the body of Montauk lore, without derision, or apparent positive bias. It wasn't actually the 4 hours I thought I had been watching it.
The less good: Finding a well executed documentary on any fringe topic, is like finding a unicorn, washing your car for you. Those that achieve any degree of success as a cohesive and engaging narrative provide a context for the different interviews, use recreation to support that, and give you a good story. I was hoping for a good overview of all of the extraordinary claims about secret projects that crossed the border into science fiction at Montauk from the last 6 decades. You can either believe all of the tales told about Montauk in the alternative literature, or treat them with complete skepticism. The middle ground as a viewer is to treat it as folktales. I wasn't expecting Montauk Chronicles to prove anything to me. I was expecting to leave it with a decent grasp of the stories related to it, and a sense of how the subjects giving interviews had contributed to its lore. That scope could have been sweeping, or parochial. I had heard or seen interviews with the main three subjects, and have a passing familiarity with tales related to Camp Hero that are a staple of what I'll call the genre. If it wasn't for that, I wouldn't have had the slightest clue as to why I should care about their stories, and what those stories really were. I find it tragic honestly. Regardless of your opinion of anyone's authenticity Bielek, Nichols, and Swerdlow, have been contributing to Montauk lore for decades, and what ended up on screen offers scant satisfaction. Those guys won't be around forever, and once they're gone they will become part of the great continuum of rehashed references in future works, and it will become increasingly difficult to know those stories in their words. Aside from that, a lot of beach scenes, a lot of dash cam, and recreations that didn't help me understand anything. And they were interminable.I have no issue with recreation, or a measure of theatrical license, these were just un-needed.
For aggressive skeptics, if it had been a better production, you could hate it more, for better reasons. For true believers who won't criticise anything in paranormal media ever, I am obviously a disinformation agent, and my review should be discarded.