I was very interested in this film, and admittedly it was mostly due to the poster, as well as the name in general (something creepy about a school out in the woods somewhere). However, I was highly disappointed. I really love found footage, but unfortunately most of the films in the genre are tired clichés of previous efforts, and more often than not the genre isn't used to its potential; it really does have potential to be used appropriately, and has been in a few films here and there.
Not all of the acting is absolutely terrible, but there are a few people in particular who really produce some less than ripe performances. I'm not even sure of everyone's name in the film honestly. The ex-girlfriend of the main character has no emotion in her speech whatsoever, which makes it absolutely unbearable listening as she spits out her lines; her new boyfriend is also fairly rough, and I felt like his Martin Luther King, Jr. line was so forced, as if the writers assume every black man in America would quote the Doctor at some point or another. Then a couple shows up during a storm who take bad acting to new depths: the boyfriend is a stereotypical hick with a terrible mullet while his girlfriend just so happens to be a psychic (how fortunate for the ghost hunting young people). There were definitely a couple little parts I enjoyed. When we first see the little girl from the movie's poster, there are some bits of her wandering in and out of the camera view, which are tense, but other than that this film mostly falls flat for tension. There's some typical nonsense about a crazy man and his mentally challenged son, trapping girls, killing them, or something of the sort; by the time all of this came around, I was pretty much tapped out on interest for a back-story in the film. It all ends typically with a police officer showing up, and there's really nothing innovative about the way it all clues up. One of my biggest problems with the story was the main character and his ex-girlfriend have this strange relationship, and the new boyfriend is now there, but none of it makes any difference to anything. They include a small talk between the ex-lovers about what seems to have been an abortion she had without him knowing about the pregnancy, and the only purpose it serves is to create one of those situations you ALWAYS find in found footage where one person is angry with another, so then this causes some sort of fallout that jeopardizes members of the group. Systematically boring. If it had led somewhere, maybe it might be worth it, but it feels like they just tossed in a contrived subplot about the abortion, and worst of all it never gets explored any further; they waste 3 minutes of screen time just to lay out a subplot that goes nowhere.
I give the film a 2 out of 10. My reason for even giving it two stars is due to the fact most of the film is in black & white for moments in the present, as flashbacks to the back-story are primarily in colour; I found this to be fairly neat, and was the only redeeming qualities. If they had focused more on story instead of the little productive value this film has, maybe they could have worked this into something average, but unfortunately for the filmmakers this is just a huge flop among a massive orchestra of flops in the found footage genre.
Not all of the acting is absolutely terrible, but there are a few people in particular who really produce some less than ripe performances. I'm not even sure of everyone's name in the film honestly. The ex-girlfriend of the main character has no emotion in her speech whatsoever, which makes it absolutely unbearable listening as she spits out her lines; her new boyfriend is also fairly rough, and I felt like his Martin Luther King, Jr. line was so forced, as if the writers assume every black man in America would quote the Doctor at some point or another. Then a couple shows up during a storm who take bad acting to new depths: the boyfriend is a stereotypical hick with a terrible mullet while his girlfriend just so happens to be a psychic (how fortunate for the ghost hunting young people). There were definitely a couple little parts I enjoyed. When we first see the little girl from the movie's poster, there are some bits of her wandering in and out of the camera view, which are tense, but other than that this film mostly falls flat for tension. There's some typical nonsense about a crazy man and his mentally challenged son, trapping girls, killing them, or something of the sort; by the time all of this came around, I was pretty much tapped out on interest for a back-story in the film. It all ends typically with a police officer showing up, and there's really nothing innovative about the way it all clues up. One of my biggest problems with the story was the main character and his ex-girlfriend have this strange relationship, and the new boyfriend is now there, but none of it makes any difference to anything. They include a small talk between the ex-lovers about what seems to have been an abortion she had without him knowing about the pregnancy, and the only purpose it serves is to create one of those situations you ALWAYS find in found footage where one person is angry with another, so then this causes some sort of fallout that jeopardizes members of the group. Systematically boring. If it had led somewhere, maybe it might be worth it, but it feels like they just tossed in a contrived subplot about the abortion, and worst of all it never gets explored any further; they waste 3 minutes of screen time just to lay out a subplot that goes nowhere.
I give the film a 2 out of 10. My reason for even giving it two stars is due to the fact most of the film is in black & white for moments in the present, as flashbacks to the back-story are primarily in colour; I found this to be fairly neat, and was the only redeeming qualities. If they had focused more on story instead of the little productive value this film has, maybe they could have worked this into something average, but unfortunately for the filmmakers this is just a huge flop among a massive orchestra of flops in the found footage genre.
