OK so I'll open by saying that on paper this movie sounded alright - I saw the trailer and thought "ok another found footage movie about some people trying to debunk a scary video, I've seen a bunch of those so I might as well give this a shot". Unfortunately, in practice nothing about this movie works. #Screamers is a strong contender for worst found footage horror movie ever.
This film is predominately focused around the company Gigaler, and it stumbles immediately from the get go. The first HOUR or so of the movie is literally just a guy filming people in the office doing day-to-day stuff and giving background on the company. The weak writing is instantly apparent; despite spending an absolutely inordinate amount of time on the inner workings of company, the writers seem to have no idea what this company does or how one even works. It's like they just threw together some buzz terms they read in an article about google: uh yeah this company does uh...social media...and videos...and, uh, steals people's privacy...somehow. Oh and they have a foosball table because modern tech startup! Nothing about the company makes much sense and nobody seems to do all that much there. Also, why is there a guy filming everything people do? Another issue is the character writing. For example, they hype the main boss guys up like bigtime entrepreneurs who have been at this for a long time and have created a(nother) seemingly solid business, yet at the same time the guys act pretty clueless and like they're still grasping in the dark hoping to find their big break. That big break apparently lies within a couple of short videos that show a girl and then a head pops up with a loud scream jump scare, ending abruptly. Um, weren't these jump scare videos being done like 10 years ago? Five Nights At Freddy's has way better jump scares and it only took one dude to make vs. this crap from an entire film crew/studio. Anyway, back to the dialogue: case in point, when the boss calls the lady who makes the videos it should have been unsettling and introduced some tension / creepiness to showcase the forthcoming scariness that will be associated with tracking down the videos. However, the conversation is super awkward and unintentionally comedic. The boss doesn't seem to know what he is even doing, and the lady sounds bored. That is representative of all the movie's dialogue - awkward and confusing. This is a huge problem being that this movie is 95% awkward, pointless dialogue and a mere 5% stuff happening. Even with all the bad dialogue, they could have made up a bit with the scary parts, right? Wrong. The whole video thing is highly unbelievable. The videos themselves are like 10 second clips with 0 budget that aren't creepy in any way. There is not a single thing about these videos that would get people curious as to who is behind them, especially not enough to physically go after them. In my opinion, they should have dumped all the budget into making genuinely bizarre, creepy videos that would intrigue viewers. Later, there is something about the whole thing being a hoax and the company trying to get publicity by exposing it, which is a decent idea, but I was so bored and off-put that I had lost all interest by then. Also something about Jack The Ripper? Who cares. Nothing scary happens. There are no deaths, no on-screen tension, no spooky stuff, etc. Ultimately the movie is terrible and beyond boring and I would encourage you to avoid at all costs.
Review of #Screamers
