Reviews

I was excited to see this title, as I am a fan of the original "Blair Witch Project" as well as director Adam Wingard's previous film "You're Next". To be fair, they made some interesting additions to the mythology of the Blair Witch. Interesting but not very good.

This film was a needlessly convoluted mess. None of the characters seemed like real people and their relationships to the original film felt too forced to be believable. There were a few decent jump scares but nothing with any staying power. And just because you have access to a drone that doesn't mean you should use it as a plot point and have the characters constantly talk about it.

Very disappointing.

It feels unfair to criticize a movie for its budget, because its clear that a lot of people with talent worked very hard on "Eradication". And to be fair, most of the movie takes place in an isolated patch of woods, so any issues with the budget are covered up by the beautiful scenery. But the beginning of this movie set a tone that the rest couldn't shake. This movie starts with some of the worst VFX I have ever seen. Maybe if those shots were closer to the end of the movie it would have been less distracting, but when you set your audience up to expect something terrible instead of something good then you create the wrong kind of tension.

Its a shame because this title ISN'T terrible. It's actually pretty good. The acting is solid, the camera work is great, and the concept is a fun twist on the Zombie Apocalypse genre. Apart from the VFX, the biggest issue is that the film drags a bit in the beginning, but it quickly picks up steam so this isn't much of an issue either.

I think I would like this more if I watched it again knowing what to expect, but for a first viewing I couldn't help but keep thinking that "Eradication" would have been better with Hollywood money.

Look: there are moments in this movie where you might wonder where the camera man is, or how they know when to film, or how they are able to cut between multiple angles. But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter. Because this is a gripping movie that shook me to my core and actually deserves to be describes as "Important."

Matt Johnson and Owen Williams star as fictional versions of themselves who are bullied everyday by the kids at their high school. Their only escape is to make movies, and eventually, they decide to make a movie about killing their bullies. Owen thinks it's a fun project, but Matt descends into obsession as he starts to think the best thing might be to make the movie for real.

Self-serious movies about school shootings like "Elephant" are often well-made, but often portray school shooters as soulless monsters. Although their actions are indefensible, "The Dirties" is brave enough to dissect shooters as people, with all of the humor and heartbreak that includes.

Look: at the end of the day, this is a solid little Found Footage movie. It's creepy, it's efficient, and without spoiling anything the last 20 minutes or so is very well done. The problem is that it presents itself as a fully formed Found Documentary, so it can't help but be compared to FF movies in that style that work better.

"Lake Mungo". "Noroi: The Curse". In my opinion, these are great movies that take full advantage of the fact they are fake documentaries to give us an emotional attachment to the characters. "Horror in the High Desert" basically gives us a solid entry as far as scares are concerned, but nothing that's memorable in the same way as those other movies. That's fine, but still a little bit disappointing. Is it completely fair to the movie to immediately compare it to other titles done in the same style? Probably not, and I admit that, but the fact is that those other titles are still out there. It's like making a Samurai movie: you can't help but be compared to classics like Seven Samurai and Yojimbo. Found Documentary is a little bit more niche but it still presents the same issue.

Worth watching all the same.

A lot of hate for this title from the FF community. On one hand it's understandable because He's Watching is NOT really a Found Footage movie. But on the other hand, it's something much weirder and arguably even better.

The idea behind this movie is that it starts out as a pretty standard found footage flick, but sort of snowballs into (basically) a demon using found footage and electronic recording to communicate and disrupt the lives of two teenage children. If you've seen Benson and Moorehead's "The Endless," this is a very similar concept of a monster creating found media to communicate, just taking it into the natural next stage of presentation.

The only real issue that I had with this movie is the angle of the pandemic. As I understand it, this movie was shot during COVID-19 lockdowns, and in the film the two main children are home alone because of a mysterious virus that targets adults and has left their parents hospitalized. Chalk it up to pandemic fatigue, but I didn't need this movie to be stapled to a real-life event. It just came across as distracting.

But this is one of those FF movies that is more about the feeling of FF than the logical machinations to justify FF. As much as I like FF movies that have a compelling reason to keep the camera rolling, when filmmakers go in the COMPLETE opposite direction I think it's just as exciting. Give this one a shot!