Ok so...yeah...
Honestly I don't know what to say about this movie. First off, it does not live up to the hype in even the slightest way. 90% of it is boring and slow; not the "calm before the storm" kind of dramatic tension, but the "man I hope the scary bits start soon" kinda slow. To be honest I'm not sure the "scary bits" ever started. Yeah there were a few nice effects and a few jump moments but you could generally see them coming from a mile away. You knew that whenever the couple was in bed something would thump or screech or etc.
Ok so rather then ramble I'm going to tell you what the movie did right and what it did wrong, starting with the wrong. First off, they utterly fail to make it seem as though the events are actually happening to a real couple and are actually taped with a home tape recorder. The quality of the film seems to meander between Film quality clearness to Blair witch grainy, there's the occasional impossible shot or obvious second camera and the acting is pretty meh. The characters rarely seem to emote and aren't to sympathetic, mostly because they're both idiots. Now, I know this is common, horror movie retardation syndrome and all, but these two, especially the boyfriend, are so stupid they pull you right out of the suspension of disbelief. It was about the point when the boyfriend was actually issuing verbal challenges to the ghost/demon that I just wrote him off as an over talkative, mobile desk toy with a death wish. Through out the movie he seems to do everything possible to cause problems, bouncing between fundamentalist sceptic and macho idiot. The girl on the other hand seems to switch between passive whiner to full on screaming, but at least it seems to happen when it would be rational for it to happen.
Now we head to the effects. I didn't expect it to be too great, being a lower budget movie and all, but to be honest the effects are barely present. There's a grand total of maybe a dozen special effect shots; though the few that there were, were well done. One thing that makes very little sense though it the foot print scene, where they capture the demon's foot prints in baby powder. We are show that not only do the foot prints show up, but apparently the demon is also an invisible pterodactyl (judging by the 3 toed prints). Also, the ending was...well it was disappointing as hell. In fact, they show it in the trailer. You know that scene where the guy flies backward at the camera? Thats pretty much it.
Now, on to what it does good. Well...it doesn't try to overtly explain anything, which is a death knell of horror. It also doesn't ever actually show you what the demon looks like, though that might be more out of budget constraints then actual subtlety. It does have a few genuinely creepy and suspenseful moments, though they tend to be repeated and hence lose a great deal of impact. And..well, thats about it. Its just otherwise generic to bad.
Ok so I have to talk about the end here, so Spoilers to anyone still cares.
In the end, the girl is basically possessed by the demon and is show to get out of bed, stand over the guy for a few hours before walking off camera. We then hear her scream and he runs out after her, only to result in silence for several moments. Finally his body goes hurtling back into the room, followed by the girl, with blood on her shirt. She then slowly walks over to the camera and after a smile does the whole "evil face eat camera" move. Now, this bugs me for a LOT of reasons. The first is the fact that it's maddeningly cliche; the actual whole lead up there was somewhat creepy, so ending in such a generic way was a terrible let down. Simply smiling and walking away would have been better, not to mention the loads of other things you could have done; having her slit her throat for instance. They had this perfect chance to really fuck with us and they copped out with a jump scare. And thats a problem with the whole movie; it all seems to be leading to something terrifying, but once it get's there its pretty much just a loud noise or something similar.
Over all, it seems like a screamer that tells you it's a screamer, it warns you the scare is coming and then it sort of burps and expects you to be afraid. Oh and yeah, the ghost actually does burp at one point. Terrifying isn't it?
2/5 and thats only because the idea is relatively neat.
Honestly I don't know what to say about this movie. First off, it does not live up to the hype in even the slightest way. 90% of it is boring and slow; not the "calm before the storm" kind of dramatic tension, but the "man I hope the scary bits start soon" kinda slow. To be honest I'm not sure the "scary bits" ever started. Yeah there were a few nice effects and a few jump moments but you could generally see them coming from a mile away. You knew that whenever the couple was in bed something would thump or screech or etc.
Ok so rather then ramble I'm going to tell you what the movie did right and what it did wrong, starting with the wrong. First off, they utterly fail to make it seem as though the events are actually happening to a real couple and are actually taped with a home tape recorder. The quality of the film seems to meander between Film quality clearness to Blair witch grainy, there's the occasional impossible shot or obvious second camera and the acting is pretty meh. The characters rarely seem to emote and aren't to sympathetic, mostly because they're both idiots. Now, I know this is common, horror movie retardation syndrome and all, but these two, especially the boyfriend, are so stupid they pull you right out of the suspension of disbelief. It was about the point when the boyfriend was actually issuing verbal challenges to the ghost/demon that I just wrote him off as an over talkative, mobile desk toy with a death wish. Through out the movie he seems to do everything possible to cause problems, bouncing between fundamentalist sceptic and macho idiot. The girl on the other hand seems to switch between passive whiner to full on screaming, but at least it seems to happen when it would be rational for it to happen.
Now we head to the effects. I didn't expect it to be too great, being a lower budget movie and all, but to be honest the effects are barely present. There's a grand total of maybe a dozen special effect shots; though the few that there were, were well done. One thing that makes very little sense though it the foot print scene, where they capture the demon's foot prints in baby powder. We are show that not only do the foot prints show up, but apparently the demon is also an invisible pterodactyl (judging by the 3 toed prints). Also, the ending was...well it was disappointing as hell. In fact, they show it in the trailer. You know that scene where the guy flies backward at the camera? Thats pretty much it.
Now, on to what it does good. Well...it doesn't try to overtly explain anything, which is a death knell of horror. It also doesn't ever actually show you what the demon looks like, though that might be more out of budget constraints then actual subtlety. It does have a few genuinely creepy and suspenseful moments, though they tend to be repeated and hence lose a great deal of impact. And..well, thats about it. Its just otherwise generic to bad.
Ok so I have to talk about the end here, so Spoilers to anyone still cares.
In the end, the girl is basically possessed by the demon and is show to get out of bed, stand over the guy for a few hours before walking off camera. We then hear her scream and he runs out after her, only to result in silence for several moments. Finally his body goes hurtling back into the room, followed by the girl, with blood on her shirt. She then slowly walks over to the camera and after a smile does the whole "evil face eat camera" move. Now, this bugs me for a LOT of reasons. The first is the fact that it's maddeningly cliche; the actual whole lead up there was somewhat creepy, so ending in such a generic way was a terrible let down. Simply smiling and walking away would have been better, not to mention the loads of other things you could have done; having her slit her throat for instance. They had this perfect chance to really fuck with us and they copped out with a jump scare. And thats a problem with the whole movie; it all seems to be leading to something terrifying, but once it get's there its pretty much just a loud noise or something similar.
Over all, it seems like a screamer that tells you it's a screamer, it warns you the scare is coming and then it sort of burps and expects you to be afraid. Oh and yeah, the ghost actually does burp at one point. Terrifying isn't it?
2/5 and thats only because the idea is relatively neat.
