Change Your Image
krismerrett
Reviews
Skew (2011)
intentions
I don't think it matters how interesting the idea of the movie was, if the movie itself didn't manage to bring across any sort of energy or drama to the storytelling. People are giving this tremendous reviews. For me, it was a lot of circular conversations with really annoying people. I think the filming of all the cheesy tourist attractions was meant to be ironic, but since it involved me actually having to see the biggest viking head, fork, pot, dish, chair, and knife it loses all irony points and becomes a pretty good indicator of the rest of the movie.
The horror element was poorly constructed. I get the idea behind the film, but they don't explore it very well. The ending is deliberately vague to give some interest that the other 85 minutes lack.
I can't even make this review interesting. It was a lacklustre, self-indulgent annoying little feature without any sort of scare to make up for the boring dialogue and travel montages that take up the majority of the feature.
Unaware (2010)
A movie about talking about barns. This is very serious.
Slowest start and a weak attempt at building anticipation. Talking for long long LONG scenes about the barn being off limits, for example. We got its importance the first time. And building it up and having them go in and just. talk. more. when they do finally get into the barn is not the way to capture an audience's attention.
This movie seemed ad libbed in many of the scenes, and unfortunately, the actors just didn't have the skills to pull it off. It didn't help that they were given "Female Character" and "Male Character" as personalities, either.The first twenty minutes actually felt like watching a home video of a slightly boring couple. They talk about Roy and the barn a lot, but it is repetitive and annoying, rather than working us towards any kind of interest or dread.
It also fell into the biggest trap of found footage movies. I'm sure it must be really hard to shoot a movie that looks professional while also appearing to be shot by amateurs. It must be hard, since so few movies can do it well (The Borderlands was good at this, as was the otherwise horrifying Skinwalkers Ranch). The shaky camera, losing focus, the weird tracking thing that I didn't think happened on digital cameras, setting the camera down at uncomfortable angles, the static, having half the movie shot in the dark are all unnecessary and detract from the movie. A few of these things could bring us into the premise of the movie. Having all of them makes the movie impossible to watch. It is worse than having it shot in a traditional way.
(At 35 minutes, I have written this review up to this point, and nothing has happened in this movie. This review is now the only thing keeping me sane.) There are three or four conversations at this point that they've had multiple times. That is absolutely unnecessary, and I don't understand how anyone watched this edit and thought, yes, this is great, we should release this.
They shouldn't have released it.
"LOOKS LIKE ITS FROM THE WHITE HOUSE"
Is this a primary school play. Could you beat us over the head with this plot any harder. I may not understand what's happening yet. 45 minutes of barn talk hasn't been enough to give me a back-story to this inane plot. Please. Explain more. Hopefully for the rest of the hour twenty.
"Let's not get ahead of ourselves"
No. At 45 minutes, you are absolutely behind yourselves. You are licking your own butts. NOTHING HAS OCCURRED.
"HIS ADVENTURES DRIVE ME NUTS"
He's gone into a barn. Three times. His grandfather's barn. His grandfather's papers. Wow, son. Calm down before you hurt yourself. That is a wild life you're leading. Watching TV and sleeping and looking in a barn.
This movie only makes sense if they are aliens.
ooo I hope they are aliens.
They see a dead thing in an old box and proceed to freak out. As if maybe that will convince me that this movie is worth watching. Maybe if the actors pretend this is a big deal, the audience will be convinced that something is actually happening! I, however, am not that easily fooled. I know there's nothing happening because I have spent the last 58 minutes watch nothing happen.
I don't think they're aliens.
He goes on about his grandfather being his only family, but doesn't wait four hours for him to get home to explain the barn before calling the FBI. "This is a very. serious. situation." No, its not. You found some old stuff in a barn.
This is how they try to build anticipation. Now, we have to go and look in the barn before the cops get here! We don't want to get my grandfather in trouble! Who knows what else is in there! If you didn't want to implicate your grandfather, you could have, oh, not called the FBI?
They have been arguing for the past ten minutes about going to the barn. She, the nagging wife before they even get married. He, to stalwart man trying to defend his grandfather from the FBI he called on him.
I'm hoping this movie is a joke, because otherwise people watched this and thought it was good. and that. That is so sad.
They've spent more of this movie talking about going to the barn than being in it, which is frankly ridiculous as they've gone into it five times. FIVE TIMES.
"What is that? What the f* is that?"
I have no idea, since you are shooting it in the dark with a blurry camera at 200 yards. However, having since seen it closer in the next ten minutes of the movie, I'm pretty sure its a guy in a rubber suit.
I'm glad you both went missing. I only wish it had happened 120 minutes ago.
TL;DR There is slow build and then there is this plodding excuse for a movie. Terrible cinematography, writing, pacing and acting just add to mind-numbing redundancy of this 120 minutes. Avoid.
The Houses October Built (2014)
when bad things happen to good ideas
I liked the idea so much, that I gave it even fewer stars for the horrible execution.
This is another example of found footage done poorly. The idea of following them through the haunted houses "in person" would have been awesome if we could see what was happening. It was so shaky and so poorly lit that there was hardly a point in watching the movie. This is where found-footage-makers need to get creative and figure out how to get the movie across as a movie, and they just didn't do it well. The skipping between cameras in the last set of haunted houses ruined the entire experience, too. If they had spent less time on the earlier ones, and then had each character in their own haunted house in the climax of the movie, going through the theme of what scares them most (they HAD this conversation and then only used one character's fears, which I really don't get) one at a time to end, THAT would have been a great culmination. Unfortunately they decided to shake the camera around in the dark instead.
Adding in a strip club just for shock value takes off like three points automatically, as well, ew, don't be like that.
I also thought it failed in how it was presented. I liked the documentary-style clips at first, until the plot of the main characters got going, and then it made no sense to have those interviews spliced in. If the Haunt Creeps filmed the events of the movie/stole the footage to post online virally, why would they add that stuff in? That would be a scary idea, but its not explored at all. Are we supposed to just forget about the entire concept of found-footage movies?
Since the haunted house scenes were wasted on technical mistakes, the movie was basically these five friends whining and fighting with each other which really sucks as a 90 minute movie. The climax doesn't get any better, so don't waste your time on this one.
Ghoul (2015)
plot shaken out in Ukraine, post if found
I do not recommend you see this. See the other reviews telling you not to see it? I read those reviews and then I was like... well... I'll see it anyway.
Don't be me. Me just wasted an hour and a half or her life. You are better than that. Be better.
The found-footage subgenre is polarizing enough, but this movie didn't even put any effort into doing it right. 1) I think we have all agreed that the movie has to be watchable. The camera work was so shaky and out of focus, that it was difficult to follow the action at all. Long scenes were done in darkness (which is an old suspense-building trick that. feels. old. stop.), and all of the classic empty-room shots were of the camera Glitching in a Spooky Manner.
This is not spooky anymore. (was it ever though.)
2) What was the plot?? I was going to post a spoiler notice, but unclicked the little box because I honestly don't know what just happened. Was it about the Famine? The acquitted Boris? The kid from the story? The serial killer? His brother? What was this documentary even supposed to be about? Serial Killers in general?? Because the interviews were all over the place. As the premise of the entire film, that could have actually been hashed out, because I was side- eying the whole things skeptically from the get-go, and that's never a good footing to start out on.
3) I was also lost as to the POINT of much of the action. So, I accept they're making a movie, even if the focus and the purpose is a little, well, nonexistent. But, (oh, there will be spoilers, btw) but if the serial killer could possess people, then why use the Ouija board? He could literally possess the characters and make them bite their tongues out, or rip their flesh off, but he spent 60 minutes making them run around in the woods to... do just that. The entire movie was this confusing plot of the ghost when he could have had what he wanted right from the beginning, and that was MADE CLEAR TO US almost as soon as they were in the house. Everything that happened after they entered the house was pointless.
4) IF YOU'RE MAKING A FOUND FOOTAGE FILM YOU NEED TO HAVE A WAY FOR THE FOOTAGE TO BE FOUND. goddamn it. Did the serial killer-ghost- possessed-killer-not-killer-wtf-is-HAPPENING submit it to their producers after he ate their faces? There is no way this footage was found. Also, on a similar note, who... added in subtitles? A soundtrack? The point of found-footage....
sigh.
Nevermind.
OH AND ANOTHER THING. JUST IN CASE I DIDN'T HATE THIS MOVIE ENOUGH, and I did, we have blatant pro-life prop., and a man battering a woman to death for being "useless" since she's infertile.
:/
And this is all so he could be born again actually literally born again?????? I still don't really understand anything, ever.
Infernal (2015)
Satan wouldn't even condone this
There is a weird trend where horror movies are made so, a) all of the characters are AS ANNOYING AS POSSIBLE, b) the plot is "written" so that nothing flows together or is explained in the narrative, and c) there is no horror to speak of.
This is perfect, if that's what you've been looking for.
The characters are just. I was rooting for them to die. They are just borrowed stereotypes. Oh, dude-bro afraid of commitment and his dude-bro best man aiming the camera at his dick and bridesmaids crotches. The wife trapping said dude-bro into marriage with her terrible ovaries. The vaguely ethnic relatives with spiritual advice? Screeching, nagging, "all I am is a mother and wife" women. At one point the father says that Imogene is impossible to know, and that is because this child has no character. Just like everyone else in this movie.
The movie is filled with completely unnecessary scenes. The wedding and birth, for example, add nothing to the plot. We get that they are getting married and having a baby before the title is shown and then they spend another 10 minutes on it. Unless everyone is going to die in a bloodbath of doom, I don't want to see your wedding in a horror movie get out. There are four scenes dedicated to Imogene brushing her hair. FOUR. This is not important. We get when you SAY IT SIX MORE TIMES that she has issues. Jesus Christ.
The only other thing that this movie contains is the shrill arguments of everyone in this movie and some horror clips stolen from old Are You Afraid of the Dark episodes.
Satan is honestly disappointed that he was brought into this horrific attempt at a movie. What even. Fog machines and floating toys? At least the cirque du soleil crowd got some extra work, though seriously. Could have done better, guys.
The Culling (2015)
Writing for stupid people
I'm writing this as the movie is still going because I can't commit to watching this anymore.
There is so much happening in this movie. Creepy country house, weird little girl, ghost kids?? Or feral what was that about???, shadow figure, country bumpkin murderers, college road trip gone bad, murder pits.... It's a disaster because they don't bother connecting the concepts. It feels thrown together. This is what scares people? Let's us all of it.
It's writing assuming your audience is too stupid to need a plot that makes sense. It works for some horror movies, but this just wasn't scary on top of it.
The dialogue felt improvised, badly. The plot devises to separate the group to kill everyone off was terrible. There was no carry-over in motivations (Lucy was so important and then they sit on the porch and cuddle and forget about looking for her, and then later they see a shadow figure but she completely forgets about it and sits in the house crying with Lucys mom)
The whole thing devolves into nonsensical chaos (which I'm watching now) which still. Isn't. Scary.
It doesn't have to be a genius plot to be a good movie. Any kind of effort in a coherent plot, character motivation, and dialogue would be nice. This had none of that.
EDIT oh of course it was a demon children movie. Thank god it also managed to include a scene with sexual assault and a girl running half naked because that was what this movie was lacking //sarcasm