Okay, I guess I don't need to tell you the plot, just read the summary.
So what's good? The main character is good. The actor playing him is good. The tense scenes where things aren't happening but you're scared that they might, are good. The whole thing works reasonably well.
What's not? The scares are over the top. The film is without a score, as is often the case for found footage, because why would there be music? But every time there's a jump scare - and there's a LOT of jump scares - there's this big musical BLAHHHHH! to make you jump.
And the scares themselves - in a movie like this things should escalate. You should have, like distant noises in the woods, then the noises get gradually closer, then there's some physical interaction, etc. Not here. Here, there's a typical ghost girl in the forest and one of the very first scares we get is the guy leans forward in his shelter and she's just there, right behind him, looking through a big gap in his wall. BLAHHHHHHH! At other times she walks past the front door of his shelter... BLAHHHHHH! Or sticks her face into his shelter and screams at him... BLAHHHHHH! It's honestly so much so fast that it's almost like they're going for comedy.
Nor is there any apparent logic to what's going on. Yeah, ghost girl is around. At one point he finds a skeleton in a long deserted camp. Maybe that's her? But... there's also some kind of monster that roars in the distance and pushes trees over. And somebody who leaves voodoo dolls outside his shelter at night. And whispering noises, and static on his camera, and pretty much anything else they could think of.
It's like they took a ghost movie, combined it with a Bigfoot movie, and then stuck a Blair Witch style thing in there, and some Satanists-in-the-woods stuff, too. Again, it's so over the top that you'd hardly be surprised if Aliens and Dracula and a Zombie Apocalypse turned up, with poor Zach looking at the camera and going "wow, what else could go wrong?!"
A couple of minor logic issues, too. He waits waaaay too long before trying to escape. Seriously, he's got knocked down trees and ghost girls and screams in the night from day one, and he's like a week in before he's even thinking of leaving. And when he does try to leave they do the "winds up back where he started" thing. But he has a small river nearby... why not just follow it downstream? Do that, and you'll reach something sooner or later. Okay, maybe not if some freaky supernatural force is distorting reality, but still, it has to be worth a try!
I know I've gone on at length about the flaws, but it's honestly a half decent effort despite them. I just wish there'd been a bit more thought gone into it, and a good deal more restraint in the scares.
So what's good? The main character is good. The actor playing him is good. The tense scenes where things aren't happening but you're scared that they might, are good. The whole thing works reasonably well.
What's not? The scares are over the top. The film is without a score, as is often the case for found footage, because why would there be music? But every time there's a jump scare - and there's a LOT of jump scares - there's this big musical BLAHHHHH! to make you jump.
And the scares themselves - in a movie like this things should escalate. You should have, like distant noises in the woods, then the noises get gradually closer, then there's some physical interaction, etc. Not here. Here, there's a typical ghost girl in the forest and one of the very first scares we get is the guy leans forward in his shelter and she's just there, right behind him, looking through a big gap in his wall. BLAHHHHHHH! At other times she walks past the front door of his shelter... BLAHHHHHH! Or sticks her face into his shelter and screams at him... BLAHHHHHH! It's honestly so much so fast that it's almost like they're going for comedy.
Nor is there any apparent logic to what's going on. Yeah, ghost girl is around. At one point he finds a skeleton in a long deserted camp. Maybe that's her? But... there's also some kind of monster that roars in the distance and pushes trees over. And somebody who leaves voodoo dolls outside his shelter at night. And whispering noises, and static on his camera, and pretty much anything else they could think of.
It's like they took a ghost movie, combined it with a Bigfoot movie, and then stuck a Blair Witch style thing in there, and some Satanists-in-the-woods stuff, too. Again, it's so over the top that you'd hardly be surprised if Aliens and Dracula and a Zombie Apocalypse turned up, with poor Zach looking at the camera and going "wow, what else could go wrong?!"
A couple of minor logic issues, too. He waits waaaay too long before trying to escape. Seriously, he's got knocked down trees and ghost girls and screams in the night from day one, and he's like a week in before he's even thinking of leaving. And when he does try to leave they do the "winds up back where he started" thing. But he has a small river nearby... why not just follow it downstream? Do that, and you'll reach something sooner or later. Okay, maybe not if some freaky supernatural force is distorting reality, but still, it has to be worth a try!
I know I've gone on at length about the flaws, but it's honestly a half decent effort despite them. I just wish there'd been a bit more thought gone into it, and a good deal more restraint in the scares.
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