The only thing easier to find than a bad killer clown movie is a bad found footage movie, so the deck was pretty stacked against Gags The Clown even before I found out it was based on a viral phenomenon, giving me unpleasant flashbacks to Slender Man. But to my pleasant surprise, it got out from under the shadow of all those red flags and turned out to be a pretty good little chiller; the sort of thing that, back in the regular days of this site, I would be grateful to for being above average and giving me something to remember. Hell it might have even ended up in my book!
The key reason that it works, beyond wisely not giving Gags any kind of (likely annoying/underwhelming) backstory, is that the creative team of Adam Krause and John Pata (former directed, latter produced, both wrote) understand that having multiple POVs in this sort of “found footage” movie (they dislike the term, and they’re right that it’s not, but I’m referring to it as one for the sake of brevity) keeps it from ever getting too dull, with minimal “why are they filming?” moments that have derailed so many others in this sub-genre. Our characters are a news team tasked with covering the ongoing appearances of the creepy clown around town, a trio of teens who are using the hysteria to play pranks, a right-wing podcast host who wants to be a hero for his viewers, and a pair of cops who are on patrol the night Gags has seemingly upped his game. And they each have different, motivated ways of depicting their POV – the podcast guy is streaming live, the cops have their body cams, the teens are just filming everything with their phones, etc. There are occasional uses of security cameras and such to give a different view on the proceedings, and every now and then I wasn’t quite sure what camera was being used, but for the most part it’s a very well thought out way of telling the story in a non-cheating way but without too much of the tedium that proves to be a crutch for so many of its predecessors.
And (minor spoiler) eventually all of the characters converge in a single area, so it actually feels like a true ensemble film as opposed to something more episodic and disconnected, which it seemed it might be at first. But unlike Mockingbird, which had a similar structure (and also involved a creepy clown), the tone doesn’t change wildly between these segments, while the aesthetic itself does, so we get some variety in the proceedings but no whiplash from suddenly feeling like a different kind of movie, as Mockingbird did whenever it cut to the guy pulling off Jackass-style pranks. The POV might keep changing, but there is a genuine sense of mounting escalation to the proceedings, and even when they all meet up it doesn't feel like a forced "well let's get to the ending" decision, but a natural one. It's really well done in that regard.
That said it does get a bit repetitive at times, in particular with the right-wing guy (who reminded me of my old coworker, which made me chuckle) who – another spoiler here – turns out to be all talk, which was obvious from the start since he was clearly modeled after Alex Jones/Bill O’Reilly type of “tough guys” who were also afraid of putting a mask on during the height of the pandemic. But knowing he’d get what he deserved kept it afloat, and with three other teams to check in with, at least we’re never with him for too long. I just wish his story had more pull throughout; it’s not until he comes face to face with Gags that his storyline becomes more compelling.
The disc has a ton of extras, including the short film that they were making when all those viral photos surfaced back in 2016 (which, amusingly, was more traditional found footage and felt almost as long as the movie despite being a fraction of the length). There’s also some charming footage of the premiere in Wisconsin; a nice reminder that the film was an independent/regional production that came together from good natured people who were happy to help the filmmakers. Indeed, on the commentary, they note that a certain scene was supposed to be shot at a local fun park, only for the owners to turn them down – it was apparently the only time they were denied anything by their neighbors (luckily, a local traveling carnival was happy to help, turning on all the rides the night before they opened so they could have proper production value, with the carnies all going along with whatever was asked of them). Maybe because the right-wing guy had me thinking a lot about all the division in the world (especially in the pandemic era, which this predated), it served as a nice reminder that most people are inherently good and willing to help their fellow man. Thanks, Gags.
It's been a minute since I watched a found footage movie (assuming I logged them all here, the last one was Paranormal Activity 7, back in November), so I want to thank They're Inside for reminding me that when done well, it's a technique I do rather enjoy. It's a shame the marketplace was glutted by so much crap after the first PA, because there's seemingly unlimited potential to make it work within any sub-genre, not to mention the ability for literally anyone to compete due to the inherent lo-fi nature of the gimmick (unlike the similar slasher boom of the early 80s, where you'd need a proper FX guy and usually a memorable location to keep up with the Halloweens and Friday the 13ths). As a result, I *still* feel my heart sink a little when I realize something's going to be a POV film.
But this one mostly works just fine. It helps that there's a genuine reason to be filming most of it: our heroes are making a movie and one of them is collecting footage for the behind the scenes. Sometimes it's her camera we're seeing it through, sometimes it's the camera that's being used to film the movie itself (seemingly every scene they shoot is interrupted by something strange happening outside, a creepy visitor, etc), and eventually it's mounted hidden cameras that the killers have placed around the home. I didn't quite buy the reality of this aspect; some of these shots seem to be from cameras that there's no way the characters couldn't notice, but if it's the alternative to the documentary girl filming everything even when things get hectic, I'll gladly take it.
The only other issue is that it is, basically, "The Strangers: Now In Found Footage", which I'm sure has probably been done before anyway (I don't keep track of this stuff as well as I used to, but Strangers and the FF boom both came in 2008/9, so combining them HAD to have happened before, right?). The filmmakers acknowledge it on their commentary, so it's not as mercenary as it might have felt a decade ago, but it still leaves you with seemingly unnecessary deja vu from time to time. Luckily, while their masks/demeanor are similar, they don't share the "because you were home" randomness of their actions - there's a legit reason for them to go after this director. It's delivered in a somewhat clunky way (without spoiling, they basically have to rearrange the chronology of the film's events at times in order to prevent having a 15 minute exposition bout at the end), but as with the mounted cameras thing, it's a lesser of two evils deal.
Plus, it's genuinely well made! Not something you can say about a lot of these movies, but there are several moments where I was impressed with the filmmaking, in particular a lengthy (nearly ten minutes, I think? With only one cleverly hidden cut) shot featuring not one but two graphic on-screen deaths that had me actually wondering how they pulled it off without the ability to cut away. There are other surprisingly gruesome deaths in the film (outside of the commentaries, the main bonus features are two of the actors having their heads cast with plaster - guess what for?), so along with the genuinely creepy nature of the whole thing, it actually makes for an effective mini-slasher, found footage or not.
With a few less contrivances in the script this would stand as a must-see, but even as is, it's one of the better examples of a reality-based found footage film, proving you don't need ghosts, witches or Cloverfields to justify the approach. Also, BECAUSE the last one I saw was Paranormal 7 (which was ultimately crippled by being forced into it), it was nice to be reminded that the POV style doesn't have to be a crutch or something to actively try to get away from as long as you take the time to brainstorm some workarounds. Good stuff.
What say you?
P.S. I truly hope this isn't necessary, but trigger warning: the film occasionally discusses - but thankfully does not show - a woman who was sexually assaulted by her father when she was little. Icky af, but more than that, given the current news re: Roe vs Wade and how some states apparently feel that sort of thing doesn't qualify as an exception, I can see how it might be far more upsetting than any of the traditional horror elements.
Like most people in the world (including its crew, more on that soon!) I was disappointed with The Ghost Dimension, the alleged "finale" of the Paranormal Activity franchise that didn't really tie anything up and if anything just added more plot threads to the already overburdened canon for the once simple franchise. So when I heard that the revival film, Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin (no relation to Patrick Swayze OR Australian sugar cubes) would be a standalone entry with no ties to Katie, Toby, etc, I was kind of relieved. Not only would I get to spare myself a refresh of the last few entries to properly arm myself for the storyline, but maybe there would be a "back to basics" kind of approach that would allow the series to actually be scary again.
Alas, my hopes went out the window in the first scene, when I saw that the film was presented in widescreen. As I've said before, the appeal of the "found footage"/POV aesthetic is that, when it works well (i.e. the first film) you can believe you're watching something that actually happened, which doesn't quite work when it looks exactly like every other movie out there. Some scenes don't even bother to try to sell the illusion of a first person perspective and present their moments in a traditional 3rd person manner, which isn't the worst idea (if anything I've called for it to be tried), but without changing the aspect ratio or putting up a timestamp/red dot "recording" kind of overlay, there's often no real way to know if you're watching POV footage or not. As with IMAX sequences in otherwise standard films, or Freddy's Dead with its "put your glasses on now" gimmick, there needs to be a clear "break" to prime the audience for this kind of change, but that never happens here. There's a dinner scene that is either switching back and forth between the two, or suggesting a very nimble cameraman - the fact that I'm not sure is kind of a problem.
So the movie curiously hamstrings itself with the found footage approach, but "cheats" out of it on occasion with no discernible rhyme or reason, and I spent half my viewing wondering why. The plot calls for cameras, of course; our heroine, Margot, is making a documentary about her search for her mother, who abandoned her as an infant and left her not knowing any of her family. Via 23andme she discovers a relative in an Amish community, so her and her cameraman (plus a kooky boom guy they hire) head there, and thankfully it only takes about nine seconds after their arrival for things to not seem right (I'll give it this much, it doesn't drag out the spooky goings on as much as some other films in this sub-genre). And apart from a few snafus with the POV approach (like an early scene where there is clearly two cameras filming the action but only one has been established), so far it's all more or less in the usual wheelhouse for this sort of thing - but it's at this point it seems that it would have made more sense if the characters dropped the cameras and the filmmakers presented the rest of the story traditionally, with perhaps one or two cam sequences for good measure and also trailers.
In fact, given the religious/demon elements that the film centers on, I couldn't help but think of [Rec] at times, and in turn, think about how that series' 3rd film took this approach, starting off with cameras and then switching out of that mode in order to give the story its ideal presentation. That's not what happens here; the narrative is actually pretty interesting (SPOILER: you might be reminded of The Sentinel), but it's constantly being held back by the needless POV structure. The best of the other films had their characters set up mounted cameras to avoid us in the audience having the "why are they filming this?" questions (no one will question why an oscillating fan is still filming!), but there's no such luck here. As a result, in order to get key information the characters have to film themselves doing everything, even going to the auto parts store to buy a car battery (considering they're in Amish country and have to rely on a tempermental generator to charge things, you'd think they'd be a little choosier with when they turned the cameras on). With every interesting story reveal, I kept thinking how much more engaged I'd be if I wasn't forced to constantly wonder why the cameras were being brought out, or - given that the cams WOULD be abandoned at times - why the director wasn't switching out of it there as well.
And yeah, you can "just go with it" the way you did for things like Parks & Rec (which aped The Office's documentary structure but never actually had a camera crew present in its narrative), but that doesn't quite work for a horror movie. By constantly being flip flopped between being a fly on the wall or being "in their head", the scare potential is constantly being betrayed by (attentive) viewer confusion. When a character descends into a long shaft, it could have been an atmospheric creepfest, and a typical horror film would have a very wide shot to illustrate the depth of the hole and how isolated the character was, but instead we get her POV... sometimes. Sometimes it goes up to her friend's POV, who is sure to grab his camera and look at the hole as he operates the winch. As a result, it ends up being kind of a dull scene (not helped by the fact she goes back up almost instantly), hampered by nonsensical character decisions being made in order for us to see all of it. There's another scene where they have to restart the generator during a snowstorm, and I couldn't help but think how tense it might have been with traditional angles and editing, instead of me wondering "Don't they have flashlights? Why are they risking dropping their expensive camera in the snow to film themselves trudging through snow? Do they plan to use this footage in their family documentary?" It's that sort of thing, over and over, until I just kind of checked out. As with 3D, the POV aesthetic is a tool, and a good one when wielded correctly, but when misused it's just a turn off, at least for me. If you're going to ask me to deal with shakey camerawork, a lead character who we rarely see, etc., there should be some benefit to the approach, but I could find no such thing here.
Which is a shame, because the climax is great. If you participated in any of the "drive thru" haunts that cropped up last year due to covid, you might feel right at home when two survivor characters attempt to escape the burning farm as various possessed (or just angry?) townsfolk chase after them, as does the film's new demon - it really felt like one of those Halloween Horror mazes that I drove through last year because doing them in person wasn't possible. Also the final scene is pretty chilling, as is the implication for what could happen next if this film proves to be a success for Paramount Plus (and yes, I AM annoyed I couldn't see this in theaters; it's actually kind of ironic given its widescreen presentation that this is the first one that actually went direct to video). But alas, too little too late.
Not to mention that this is a weird way to try to revive a dying franchise after six years. Someone from the film likened it to Season of the Witch, and while that is an acceptable point of reference in theory, it doesn't quite work the same way. Halloween III came out one (1) year after Halloween II, a film that seemingly finished off the Michael Myers story for good. This film is coming after a narrative that was riddled with unanswered questions, and after several years to boot, so the fact that it's unrelated AND doesn't even really FEEL like an entry in the series (they don't even do "Night #1"!) makes the Halloween III comparison a poor one. What the series needed was something like H20, a soft reset that brought back the elements and characters we enjoyed and got things back on track while ignoring specific beats that weren't working. I mean, even Spiral had more connection to its older franchise than this had - this often felt like an unrelated movie entirely that was slapped with the PA name.
It was released alongside Unknown Dimension, a documentary about the franchise thus far, covering each film in sequence. One might think it's too new of a franchise to warrant the "Crystal Lake Memories treatment", but one should consider that the films' blu-rays have been noticeably bare bones so far - no commentaries, no behind the scenes pieces, etc. Some have deleted scenes or extended versions (sans any commentary explaining why the scenes were excised), but that's been about it, so this doc is really the first time we've gotten to hear the cast and crew (pretty much everyone of note is here) talk about how their film(s) came together. One entry was basically shot and reshot up until the release date, which finally explains why its trailer had so much footage that wasn't in the film itself. In fact it might have even been the first time I actually saw what any of the directors looked like besides Oren Peli, because I've met him (a good place as any to note I am in the film as well, as a "horror expert" or whatever the hell they call me when I do these things).
It's also refreshingly candid; the director of Ghost Dimension alludes to there being too many cooks in the kitchen and having the 3D element forced on him, and Jason Blum flat out says that one and PA4 are bad. And that makes me wish they had waited a bit longer so they could be frank about the new film as well; the cast and crew appear near the end, speaking from the set about how they want to bring the series back, but noticeably absent from this section is the film's writer, who has noted (via Twitter) that there were unfortunate compromises on this new one as well. If the IMDb is to be believed (...) another film is on the way, apparently (subtitled The Other Side, so we might get someone filming their trip to the dentist to get braces), and will return to the world of Katie and Kristi. But honestly I don't care so much about that as I do the producers taking a good hard look at what made the first film as good as it was and trying to revive THAT, with or without video cameras.
Just about all of my favorite horror movies were "old" by the time I saw them; Halloween and Dawn of the Dead were both released before I was even born, and I obviously wasn't there on opening night for the likes of The Thing (I was 2) or any of the Friday the 13ths until they were no longer actually called Friday the 13th (Jason Goes To Hell broke my theatrical Jason cherry). So it's safe to say that, for the most part, a movie's acclaim and/or franchise significance isn't much of a factor when it comes to whether or not I enjoy it. With that in mind, I sadly have to report that the existence of a sequel deflated what I suspect was a big part of the charm for Creep, which is now six years old but "new to me".
When it's a supernatural kind of thing, there's less of a problem with knowing that there are sequels - I am used to the likes of Freddy or zombie Jason being "killed" at the end of one movie only to be revived in the next. But Creep, being a found footage thing, is about a very flesh and blood person, and knowing he returned for the sequel kept all suspense at bay here, because I inadvertently knew how it ended and yet knew almost nothing else about it. My entire knowledge of the film (entire franchise, really) could be summed up with "Mark Duplass played the title character and it's found footage" - I literally couldn't have told you one other thing about it prior to sitting down today. I didn't even realize it was a Blumhouse (Tilt) joint!
Oh, and that it was a horror/thriller, so as soon as the film established its premise I could basically see the rest of it flashing before my eyes. Our hero is Aaron (Patrick Brice, who also directed and co-wrote with Duplass), who takes a job filming Josef (Duplass) as he records a video diary for his unborn son as he is expected to be dead from cancer before the baby even arrives, let alone grown up (if you're thinking "That's the plot of the movie My Life", the movie acknowledges it!). But it only takes a few minutes for Josef to start making Aaron uncomfortable, starting off the series of videos by taking a bath and constantly trying to scare him. As the day proceeds Aaron gets more and more unsettled, and Josef thwarts his attempts to leave. It's obvious Josef is crazy, and - again - Duplass is the one to come back for the sequel, so you don't need to take Advanced Movie Plotting 101 to guess how things are going to end.
That said, it does swerve a bit for its third act (spoiler), as Aaron does manage to escape. The rest of the movie picks up some time later, where Aaron keeps getting weird packages from Josef and realizes he has followed him back to Los Angeles (the first half or so of the movie takes place at Lake Gregory, which is about 90 miles/two hours east of LA). This was a good call on their part; it was getting more and more ridiculous that Aaron would stay behind, even with Josef's attempts at keeping him there (which included hiding his car keys), so it gave the movie a bit of a boost at a time when the last grain of salt would have likely been used up.
But still, it's just these two guys throughout the movie; the only other person we ever hear is Josef's wife Angela on the other end of a quick phone call. Since Aaron is the one holding the camera, that means you're spending pretty much every moment of the first 50 minutes looking at Duplass, and while he's quite good and effectively, well, creepy, it gets somewhat tiresome after a while. Perhaps if he hadn't started being a weirdo as soon as Aaron arrived, it would have worked better? The two men pretty much improvised the entire movie going only by a general outline (similar to how Blair Witch Project was "written"), but it seems that most of what they came up with is "Josef starts talking about something and it gets weird, then he pretends to jump out at Aaron, apologizes, and then they go something else." Angela has a couple of reveals in her quick phone call, but alas they aren't fully explored (perhaps the sequel does?), and while I tend to believe in the "less is more" approach for exposition in my scary movies, here I would have welcomed it if only to break up the repetition.
That said it was kind of fun to go back in time a bit to when found footage was all the rage and people were perfectly OK with getting up close and personal with strangers. In the early '10s it seemed that the gimmick would never really go away, but it kind of has - the Paranormal Activity series has been dormant since 2015 and the failure of the Blair Witch revival a year later pretty much killed it off on the big-screen, with only the occasional indie still employing it. Instead, we've switched to "screen thrillers" like Host and Searching, which have the same kind of appeal but a very different set of perks and limitations. Since the two men are attempting to make a third film, I can't help but think they too should switch to this format - having Duplass' psychopath "Zoom bomb" some unsuspecting folks might be fun, and it would prevent too much of the wheel-spinning that a typical found footage movie has to have (which gets more frustrating with each new sequel, as the PA series proved). Plus they could make it right now! Social distanced movies are all the rage!
Anyway, it's an OK movie, but very much a "you had to be there" kind of thing that would work better at a film festival premiere and absolute zero awareness of what it was. Even the most basic information will tell you where it's going, and while that is OK for a big movie with lots of characters (knowing the plot of Die Hard doesn't spoil Die Hard), there's just not enough here to fully make up for it. They said they were inspired by movies like My Dinner With Andre and Misery - those movies had other characters and better conversations! They even go to a diner at one point and you don't see the waiter; Jean Lenauer is spinning in his grave!
I can't recall if it was for an article, in a conversation, or maybe just a few tweets, but a while back I listed a few "rules" for making an effective found footage movie, after growing weary of seeing so many that failed to even come close to presenting any sort of reality. I mean, sure, when you're walking into Paranormal Activity 6 you can't expect anything even remotely believable (which is the key to making these particular movies work, but what do I know? I'm just the guy laughing at the series' downfall), but standalone films really have no excuse for the sloppiness I often see. So I'm happy to say that Phoenix Forgotten gets a lot more right than it does wrong, and its only real flaw is joining a party that's essentially over. Had it come out during the format's peak in popularity (2011-ish), we might be singling it out as one of the best of the lot. Now, it's just likely to ignored, and eventually give lazy punwriters an easy mark given its unfortunate title.
The most important one of these rules is to let the viewer get sucked into the possibility that what we're watching is real. Now, I mean in a general sense - I know Ridley Scott did not produce an actual snuff film, but if they do their job, I should catch myself on occasion thinking that I'm seeing at least SOME actual footage, not an entirely fictional piece. Because if they can't do that, there's really no point to the POV aesthetic - it's limiting for the filmmakers and can be a turnoff for some viewers (motion sickness, for starters), so when handicapped from the start it baffles me that so many fail to even try to depict a naturally shot piece. Impossible cutaways, recognizable actors, overuse of CGI, people filming their own loved ones being murdered... all these sins are committed time and time again, but I saw little to none of that stuff here. In fact, given the way the movie is structured, I really believed that I was watching re-purposed footage for a while, as if filmmaker Justin Harper found someone's home movies and creatively cut them in a way that could be used as genuine backdrop for a present day story he made up.
And that leads to the second rule Harper and his crew thankfully followed - they made the movie compelling from the get-go. Far too many of these films have long buildup to brief payoffs (even some of the good ones are technically guilty of this), because there's just the one or two cameras being used on this one trip into the woods or whatever, and the movie has to hit a feature runtime but also make sure no one is too rattled to keep shooting. Phoenix finds a pretty simple but effective way around this - it splits the timeline between the present day and 1997, with the present day scenes featuring a young woman (Sophie) who is making a documentary about what happened to her brother Josh, who disappeared twenty years ago... and also liked to film his adventures. At first, we're not even sure how their story ended - we know she's trying to find out what happened to him and his two friends, but the movie doesn't straight up tell us in the present day that he was never found. We see old news footage and such about the initial search for them, but unless I missed something*, they avoid coming down hard on their status in the present day. For all we know they found the bodies, or they found the three teens but they were so haunted by whatever they saw out there that they're unable to communicate anymore. I think it's around the halfway point that we get concrete proof that they are indeed still missing (presumed dead), as until then they just keep things vague: "I want to know what happened to my brother" or things along those lines. It kind of reminded me of the show I Shouldn't Be Alive, which would depict tragedies that befell rock climbers or white water rafters or whatever - there would be a group of 3-4 people who get lost/injured, but only 1-2 of them would be telling the story so we could still be in suspense about what happened to the others.
Another thing in the movie's favor in these early scenes is that it's funny, even somewhat charming at times. Two of the kids do a little spoof of the end of Contact, the aloof dad hopes that if they saw air force planes that it's "our air force", our wannabe documentarian hero is given advice on how to be a better interviewer, etc. And when they visit a pair of UFO enthusiasts and tell them that they shot the footage that was used on the news (the lights first appeared during Sophie's birthday party, so the camera was already out), one of them says "Oh that was you? Congrats! Can you please try to focus next time?" (or something along those lines) that literally made me burst out laughing. It's an unspoken tradition for these things that the people who seemingly want to be filmmakers kind of suck at it, so it's funny to see it actually called out for once (and by a jovial old guy who is still charmed by the kids and helping them out). Likability is a problem in modern horror as a whole, and even the best FF movies tend to have obnoxious protagonists (Micah, Heather, etc.) - it's not often I find myself genuinely enjoying all of the characters in one of these things.
The movie also gives us enough clues to suggest something more grounded than aliens might be responsible for their disappearance (if anything, they kind of make the abduction possibility more of a late-game theory, as opposed to something they assume right off the bat). Josh has a crush on the girl of the group (Ashley), but it seems that she is more into his buddy Mark, who they bring along on their UFO spotting trip because he has a car and better survival skills (i.e. reading a compass). In the present day we learn that some blood and a few beer cans were found in the car, so the idea that maybe this was merely a tragic love triangle/drunken accident is teased for a bit. It's also heartbreaking when Josh's mom (in the present day) says she hopes that Ashley had feelings for him in return, as he never had a girlfriend and she wanted him to experience that in his short life - because we know she didn't, and if he is dead, then I guess he did indeed die without having any romantic encounters. Since very few of these films ever bother with a dual timeline or even present day bookends, we never get any sense of how these mysterious disappearances weigh on their loved ones, so I loved seeing this brief moment of rather gut-wrenching humanity.
Then of course there's the possibility that they saw something they shouldn't have and were disposed of in the vast desert, with drug dealers and such brought up briefly as potential theories. But the one that's given some actual weight is that old standby: government coverup. As with all UFO cases (and the Phoenix Lights sightings in 1997 really did happen, look it up if you're unfamiliar), there's always the "It was the government testing a spy plane" or whatever idea, and there is indeed an air force base near where the kids are looking for the lights to appear again. Harper smartly uses some legitimate real news footage of the governor of Arizona mocking the idea of aliens back in 1997, juxtaposed with the (also real) fact that he admitted it could have been extraterrestrial about a decade later, when he was no longer governor and thus didn't have to worry about looking silly and/or trying to keep his people from panicking. Obviously, anyone sitting in the audience "knows" it's aliens because of the trailer (and a random drug dealer would be a really underwhelming answer), but if you don't see the trailer (and I never did, for the record), the film does a fine job of keeping "alien abduction" out of your head for a surprising amount of time, by utilizing the little bits of evidence they do have to present more grounded theories.
(My initial theory: he was murdered by Fox executives, because in 1997 he somehow has a VHS copy of X-Files: Fight the Future in his bedroom. The two friends were collateral damage.)
The key to all of this "we don't know" stuff is the fact that they've only found the first tape the kids made, because the second (final?) one obviously would have been on them at the time they disappeared. So the first 45-50 minutes of the movie have a Lake Mungo-esque feel to it, as if we were watching an Unsolved Mysteries episode where they had actual footage instead of recreations. As I said, they had me believing for a while that the 1997 footage was all legit - the aspect ratio and quality changes to what they'd actually have back then (4:3 VHS quality crap), unlike Paranormal Activity 3 and some others that couldn't be bothered to try to match the proper technology for the time. And even more importantly, what we were seeing really wasn't all that unbelievable - the incident was real, and there probably IS footage shot by an adventurous teenager, running around in the local desert hoping to get more proof of it. In reality, that kid would find nothing and go home, but if a filmmaker in 2017 got access to that footage and cut it up in between newly shot (fictional) scenes of actors pretending to be related to the people in that footage, no one in the audience would be the wiser, and it'd be pretty creative to boot.
Of course, that illusion is eventually shattered when their final tape is found, thanks to a librarian who finds their damaged school camera in storage (how it got sent to them isn't spelled out, but the camera has a "Property of (whatever school it is)" sticker on it, so we can assume someone found it and mailed it to them however many years later). The tape is a bit beat up but can be played, and at this point we see it play straight through, revealing what happened to them (well, mostly, it's a single camera hampered by 1997 technology, so it's not exactly crystal clear, but that's also realistic). If there's one thing about the movie that bugged me, it's that they don't return to the present day after the footage is watched. It's treated as a reveal; she hits PLAY and then they cut to later as she is stunned by whatever was on the tape, and then she makes an inquiry at the air force base to see if they can help her explain what she saw, but they refuse to help. Then she just kind of shrugs and we watch the entire tape in full, and when it finishes the movie is over. Does she show it to her mom, or the other kids' parents? Upload it to Youtube? Finish her documentary? We just don't know. It's kind of a weird way to close it up, because the movie is presented more as her journey than his, and we kinda figure from the start that his ended in tragedy, so it would have been nice to see how things ended up in the present day.
As for that last tape, this is where the movie becomes more traditionally found footage-y: they goof off a bit, they film more than necessary, and finally they get lost. The period setting serves it well; we know they won't have GPS or cell phones (these existed in 1997, but no explanation is required for their absence - they weren't commonplace as they are now), and they just have the one camera, so 99% of the time it's Josh's POV, allowing us to never forget whose POV we're seeing (a major issue with many FF films, especially Blair Witch 3 and pretty much any one about ghost hunters). But they justify the continued filming in a way I don't think I've heard before - when the obligatory group member goes missing, the other two keep shooting landmarks, so they can retrace their steps in the morning (rather than run in circles looking for him in the dark, they decide to keep moving in order to find help). And we get answers for the blood and beer cans, so that has its own small charms when we discover the actual context for their existence. I mean, if you're sick to death of these movies I don't think there's anything in this segment that will change your mind, but take it from this "expert" - they do way more right than wrong here.
Apparently, it's all for naught as far as box office goes, as the film is expected to only gross a mere $2m this weekend, which is pathetic for a film opening on 1500+ screens (to compare, Blair Witch Project sold about that many tickets on its opening weekend - which was in only 27 theaters). It's not the film's fault; I think the audience is just burned on this sub-genre for the time being, and it's not quite ready for a revival, even if the movie delivers the goods (though I should stress it's not particularly scary; unlike Blair Witch Project's strange noises and such throughout, it's really only the last five minutes that put the movie in the "scary movie" genre, as it's otherwise basically a straight up mystery documentary). Hopefully it will find its audience on home video and VOD down the line, but even if not I hope they can take some solace knowing that they won me over - I'm as tired of these movies as anyone, and was not expecting to enjoy it (I don't go into a movie HOPING to hate it, I just didn't think there would be anything to hook me in. I was really only going because I hadn't updated the site all week and had time to see it before work). But it didn't take long for me to realize that they actually thought the POV aesthetic through and knew how to keep the audience engaged without cheating or breaking any semblance of "reality", and remained largely free and clear of the genre's usual pitfalls. Good job, folks - sorry about all the shitty ones over the past couple years that apparently have audiences unwilling to give yours a chance.
What say you?
*Very possible, as the theater skipped their usual 20 minutes of trailers due to a technical issue, starting the movie "early" (a few minutes past its actual listed time). I had to wait for them to brew coffee, because god forbid they ever make it before being reminded, so when I walked into the theater expecting trailers, I saw the movie was already on. It doesn't seem like I missed anything of note (it couldn't have been on for more than 30-60 seconds), but it's possible there was some text at the top that clearly stated their status in 2017.
The funny thing about Blair Witch Projectis that on its own, there really isn't much to it - there are only three characters (who are easy to dislike for long stretches of the film) and on-screen action is kept to a minimum. And, most notably, there really isn't much of a story in the movie itself - you get these quick references to things that only those (like me) who will scour BlairWitch.com and the tie-in books will fully understand, but remain relatively unexplored within the 80 minute film itself. That might be because it was never supposed to exist as a pure "found footage" movie as we've come to know them - the material of the three filmmakers lost in the woods was supposed to be part of a more traditional (but fake) documentary, but Dan Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez realized they had something special with just that footage alone. So they released the "lost in the woods" footage on its own as a full-length film and repurposed the rest of the material into The Curse of the Blair Witch and other tie-in specials, making history in the process. I'd be willing to bet if they made that movie as originally conceived it would not have been the success that it was, and we certainly wouldn't be here withBlair Witch, a direct sequel tasked that takes a "back to basics" approach, albeit now with the pressure of reviving a potentially lucrative franchise.
And by "direct sequel" I just mean it's not a meta thing like Book of Shadows, but I want to stress that you barely even have to see the first film - let alone remember it - in order to follow this one. Again, a lot of the original's story isn't actually IN the movie proper, and the target audience for horror movies today probably weren't even in first grade when the film hit theaters, so you can easily sense Lionsgate didn't want to alienate anyone by making it Saw-like in its continuity. Normally I'd scoff at this sort of thing, but I see the studio's point; since it only had one (not loved) sequel, the "franchise" hasn't remained in the general public's eye the way, say, Nightmare on Elm Street has - you can bring that series back without having to worry about the audience knowing who Freddy Krueger is. But Blair Witch is a different story, because even people who DO remember the movie might not have ever bothered to dig deep into the "lore", so the new creative team (Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett of You're Next and The Guest fame) have an interesting dilemma - they have to remind the audience who/what the Blair Witch is while following up a movie that had a campaign that largely depended on outside information. Throw too much of that nitty gritty in, and they can't expect a new audience to follow along... but if they make it overly accessible to newcomers they risk annoying the people who wanted a sequel in the first place. Unsurprisingly, they catered more toward the latter option, creating a film that almost borders on remake territory while largely keeping any "reveals" self-contained.
(Warning: big spoilers ahead - this review is more for those who have seen the film already and/or don't care about what it reveals! If you're just curious if I liked it or not - I thought it was OK. I really like the first act and some standout sequences in the rest, but as a Blair Witch devotee I felt a bit underwhelmed.)
For years we've wondered what happened to Heather in that last shot of the film, and what Mike did after that point, and where Josh went, and how their footage was found elsewhere, and so on and so on... but this film doesn't answer any of that. The plot concerns Heather's brother James* being sent a tape that might be of his long-lost sister (the place takes place in 2014, twenty years after BWP's setting) by some internet conspiracy guy named Lane, so naturally he plans to head out to the woods along with three friends and a whole bunch of cameras. The plan is to locate the spot that this tape was supposedly found and start circling from there in order to see if they can find that house where the footage was shot, and in turn maybe find Heather (they don't seem concerned with finding Josh or Mike). When they meet up with Lane, he asks if he and his girlfriend (Valorie Curry from The Following, the only cast member I recognized) can join them, and off to the Black Hills they go, with Lisa (who is making a documentary, of course) filming their car as they walk away from it - a nice little visual nod to the original.
It's this first act that works best. The plot is laid out with minimal excess, and we're brought up to speed on the first film's story (that the three people went into the woods and were never seen again), plus offered a little of what happened after - one of our main characters, Peter, was actually on one of the unsuccessful search parties. As with the original, they're smart enough to throw in some humor (Peter's reaction to a confederate flag hanging in Lane's home is priceless), and what may be my favorite little Easter Egg in the film: they stay in the same motel room before heading out to the woods. The characters are likable, there isn't much being shot for no reason... and most importantly, as a giant fan of the first film, I was happy to be back in that world again. As I've said, I like Book of Shadows, but it's not really a true sequel - it's more like Halloween III in that it's set in a different universe entirely. This film brings us back to the original world (like Halloween 4!), where our characters have never seen The Blair Witch Project because it doesn't exist (and thus, they've also been spared the shitty parodies), and each little mention of Elly Kedward or Coffin Rock made me smile. It was, so far, exactly what I was hoping for when I heard what the film's plot was.
But as I said, it almost feels like a remake at times, and as it went on I found myself feeling more frustrated than intrigued. It's not like a beat for beat remake, but even by sequel standards it sticks a bit too close to the overall structure; even with my spoiler warning I don't think I'm actually giving anything away by saying it seems they end up in the same house near the end of the film. I can't recall if it was ever explicitly said in the first film, but this was Rustin Parr's house - which had been burned down fifty years before (again, per the lore), so how the hell did they end up running around inside of it? And why couldn't any of the search parties find it? This is one question the movie kind of answers, though it's very vague and mostly just adds more questions to the pile. We've all seen enough movies to know "time travel!" when we see it, and there are some cool touches in the idea that time is moving differently for everyone (our main characters are in the woods for like 3-4 days, yet the clean-shaven Zane ages enough to have a full bushy beard by his last appearance), but the film frustratingly refuses to clarify these concepts in any meaningful way. I know being vague was part of the original film's power - but it was also simpler. Time travel (and other things I won't spoil - partly because I don't know what the hell it was supposed to mean) wasn't ever really considered in the context of the film, because the house-burning history hadn't been explained in the first film (just in the books and website), so only nerds like me wondered about the discrepancy - to everyone else it was just some house in the woods. Part of the first film's power was the idea that maybe these kids were just going crazy and there was nothing supernatural going on at all, but this one cements the fact that these woods really DO have something going on that involves the supernatural. Once you get into that area, I think the audience can reasonably expect some explanation for what is going on, because you can no longer coast on the ambiguity. All of the people who watched Blair Witch Project and walked away thinking that Heather had just cracked up now have proof that they were wrong, but that's it - no follow through. You can't just tell someone they're wrong without offering some hard evidence - it's like telling a kid he's grounded without telling him why.
I mean, near the end of the movie there's a pretty big reveal about that tape that sent them on their journey to begin with, and I'm not even sure the characters realize it. That to me seems like a giant missed opportunity to show us something that we haven't seen in one of these movies. Or maybe we have (I know I've seen a lot, but not all of them), but you know what we HAVE seen, a lot? People running through woods with cameras, and people screaming each others' names because they're not sure where they went, and any number of other found footage tropes that the movie gives us instead. See, part of what made the first film such a phenomenon was how unique it was; I know people love to cite Last Broadcast and Cannibal Holocaust as "doing it first", but that's not accurate. Cannibal Holocaust starts off and for quite some time remains a traditionally shot film, with the "found" part of it not even making half of the runtime if memory serves. And Last Broadcast is, ironically, a faux documentary with talking heads and recreations - the same sort of thing Blair Witch Project was originally designed to be. But BWP didn't offer any outside perspective; from start to finish, we are seeing everything through Heather or Josh's POV (or Mike after Josh disappears). Hell, we never see all three of them in the same shot because one of them is always holding the camera. This allowed the filmmakers (or, the cast) to create a subconscious effect on the viewer that keeps the movie from ever feeling anything like those others - and that's why so many scores of found footage movies since are compared to Blair Witch Project and not Cannibal Holocaust.
I bring this up because the movie seems to forget the audience has seen a lot of these things since 1999, and it's not quite as novel anymore. If anything the style is kind of played out; there are still the occasional winners (The Visit, or even closer cousin Willow Creek), but as of late it's the ones that act more like regular documentaries (The Atticus Institute) or rely on surveillance (Hangman) that work better than the ones that put the cameras in the hands of their characters the whole time. The narrative offers a solution to the usual "Why are they filming?" issue by giving them all little ear-cams (they look like Bluetooth headsets), but in execution there isn't much difference to how it looks to us in the audience - lot of shaky-cam, the usual digital hiccups, etc. The best chance they had to give the film something novel in its look is the fact that Lisa brings a drone along for overhead shots - and it never gets used once for a scare scene. Or, to be specific, its CAMERA never gets used for a scare scene - one of the film's best sequences happens when the thing gets stuck in a tree and Ashley (Peter's girlfriend) climbs up to free it. But before then, it's used for a couple of "Let's get a shot of the woods to see how far they are from civilization" kind of big crane-like shots, and nothing else. I guess it's kind of clever in a way, to introduce new tech (they also have GPS, but it never really factors into anything) but ultimately rely on the good ol' fashioned stuff that worked wonders in 1999 (one character even has a tape-based DV camera instead of a newer one with memory cards), but it doesn't change the fact that the special/unique feeling the original film offered obviously no longer applies.
Indeed, some of the best moments of the movie were kind of independent of the POV approach, in that it was the idea of the scene itself that was interesting, not how they filmed it. I already talked about the tree one, but there's also a terrific bit where Lisa is trapped in a tunnel that probably would have been shot more or less the same way if the movie was a traditional feature (she has two cameras, one that she's pushing and one on her ear, that even offers us two angles of the traumatic experience). And there's a surprising detour into body horror territory, where Ashley - who gets a cut on her foot early on - picks at the wound and finds... well, I'm not sure. But it's a creepy bit that is an exception from the film's frustrating vagueness, because it reminded me of Heather finding Josh's... WHAT? in the first film (if memory of the audio commentary serves it was his hair and teeth, but it's impossible to tell in the film itself). I also liked how the stickmen were used, though the POV aesthetic robs us of a clear look at an incredible reaction to one of them being snapped in half (you can only kind of tell what happened in the aftermath, not in the moment itself). I wouldn't go so far as to say that the movie SHOULD have been shot traditionally, but it's odd how often I was either frustrated by its limitations or just plain forgetting that it was supposed to be someone's POV. With so few handheld cameras and so many characters filming (via cameras we often can't even see on the others, blocked by hair or just the way they're standing), it lacks the intimacy the best of this sub-genre offers, where we always know who is filming and never forget that it's their perspective on the events around them. The movie takes time to establish how it can get around the usual "why are they filming?" pratfalls (the cameras are attached to their ears and basically forgotten, plus they have a tree-mounted cam showing the whole campsite), so it's a sin to keep us from ever getting good looks at this stuff. Why bother setting up a "cheat" if you're not going to put it to good use?
Going over it in my head, I realize that perhaps my main issue is that it kind of feels too much like a real movie? I really love the original, in part because they got it so RIGHT - you can easily dupe someone into thinking it's a legit "found footage" movie (or snuff film - inaccurate since no one dies onscreen, but semantics), because there's nothing that gives away the illusion. Even the end credits barely suggested otherwise since the film was shot by its actors and only had like 5-6 guys behind the concept and execution. Not the case here - the sound design alone is on par with any major Hollywood blockbuster, and it's just a bit too slick and too clean to work on that level, courtesy of the hundreds of crew people who worked on it per the end credits, which are as long as any traditional feature. Not that it's a crippling flaw for audiences (obviously, since you can levy the same "complaint" at Cloverfield and Quarantine and those movies weren't hurt any), and again it seems as if they were aiming more at audiences who had a passing familiarity with the original and would check this out the same way they might check out a remake (familiar title, but not a movie they might have actually SEEN). But I'm not that person - I'm the guy who was disappointed the title didn't have a "3" in it. And as a champion of the POV format when its utilized correctly, I had trouble finding much to pass my little test, where I ask why the movie HAD to be shot this way. Apart from the very last scene, I can't think of anything in it that would have lost its impact if it had been shot with regular camera setups, and since everyone has at least one camera we're never with one character long enough to get into their head the way we could Heather's. The POV was what made the first film so good - here it's more of a handicap.
Ultimately, I'm not sure if at this point, a direct Blair Witch Project sequel (at least, one without the original cast - and Heather Donahue ain't ever coming back) could ever be as fully satisfying as I would want. Too much time has passed, and it's not that I've moved on (I'm not lying - I have the books sitting right here next to me as I started re-reading them when the news broke that "The Woods" was actually Blair Witch), but horror itself has. What was once completely unique is now an over saturated market; just as Halloween II had to compete with not only the original classic but the literal dozens of other slasher movies that came out in 1981, Blair Witch faces the same things (plus a much-hated sequel souring the brand), but with even more time passed and, in turn, far more competition and raised expectations. I don't envy Wingard or Barrett (or even Lionsgate) for trying to achieve what, sadly, might just be impossible. Like I said, I don't dislike the film - there's certainly enough that they got right to make it a decent enough time at the movies, and it will almost certainly be received better than Book of Shadows. But I sure wish it was maybe 2004 right now, and I didn't have dozens of my own reviews saying "it reminded me of Blair Witch", because all of those movies left me almost numb to what this format can offer at its best. Hopefully I'm in the minority and the masses who maybe only watched a few of the Paranormal Activities and Cloverfield can get more out of this trip back to the woods than I was able to. I want another sequel, dammit - just don't make me wait nearly 20 years to get it.
What say you?
*Nerd alert - the brother's name is Randy in the Blair Witch Dossier. It's a canon addition to the overall franchise, so this is technically a mistake on the new movie's part, but I'm guessing the number of people who will pick up on that continuity hiccup is probably in the single digits. Or perhaps just me.
I used to always rewatch at least the previous entry of a franchise before heading out for a new sequel, if not a few of them if the series had been going long enough. However, time does not allow for such things anymore, and usually I'm lucky if I even find time to skim the films' Wikipedia entries beforehand. But I was asked to moderate a Q&A for the first Paranormal Activity just two nights ago, giving me my first viewing of the original/best film in the series in probably 4 years, and I spent a good chunk of that viewing wondering how in just six years it went from a series that worked because it was so simple (and largely believable) to one that was in 3D and promised to explain all of the "mythology" that had been building over the previous four sequels. Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimensionretains the found footage element (and the "Night #_" title cards) but is otherwise unrecognizable as a followup to that perfectly simple and effective film - and hits a new low for a franchise that hadn't been exactly knocking it out of the park lately.
Based on the grosses for the last two films, maybe some of you haven't kept up with this convoluted and increasingly uninteresting saga, but if you're in the mood to return to its world I have some good news for you - the only ones you really need to see are the first and third films, which are also the best. As this is the last one (they say, though tracking suggests that the box office won't be strong enough for them to change their minds) we will apparently never get any explanations for the unanswered questions from Paranormal Activity 4 (no expensive fork backstory!) or The Marked Ones, as those films are barely acknowledged (Hunter makes a brief appearance, and since there's a magic door I guess we can count it as a callback to Marked Ones' climax). Katie only appears as a little girl, leaving Katie Featherston completely out of this one for the first time - a bizarre choice considering its supposed position as the series closer. At this point it's more or less for fans only - why not give them one last scene with the series' most prominent player? It'd be like sending Jason to hell in a movie where he barely appear- oh, wait.
Anyway, the movie takes place in 2013 and focuses on the family that lives in a brand new (and impossibly gorgeous) home that, as we learn around halfway through, was built on the spot where Katie and Kristy's home was, before it burned down. While setting up Christmas decorations (and filming themselves doing it, even though it seems like the sort of task that would be easier to do with two hands) they find a box that doesn't belong to them, and wouldn't you know it - it contains an ancient video camera and the box of tapes that we first saw in PA3. Tapes get watched, freaky shit starts happening, more cameras are set up... you know how this goes by now. The trailer highlighted one of the film's few fun ideas, which is the idea that the girls on the 25 year old tapes were somehow seeing our heroes in the present and even communicating with them - but the film barely uses it. It only happens twice (and you've already seen one), so you can't help but feel kind of deflated when such moments come and go so quickly, only to be followed up by yet another two minutes of watching everyone sleep via multiple camera angles before anything happens.
The other new wrinkle for this entry is the 3D, which sounds wholly ridiculous on paper - why is a found footage movie in 3D? Better yet, HOW is a found footage movie in 3D, given that the consumer cameras these people use don't have that function. But oddly enough, it's one of the film's few bright spots, as director Gregory Plotkin wisely keeps everything flat except for when the ghost is out and about, with its floating particles and the things it's "touching" being given the extra dimension over an otherwise standard 2D image. So yeah, you're spending a giant chunk of the movie's runtime wearing 3D glasses for no reason, but at least it's movie-logical in its implementation, and gives the film most of the faint pulse that it has.
But at the same time, it's sort of representative of everything that's wrong with the movie. The first one terrified people with little more than loud bumps on the steps and a few shadows moving around - this one relies on a giant CGI black swirl to get those boo moments. On occasion Plotkin trusts in the audience's imagination - there's a fun little bit where the mom (who, in keeping with the film's attempt to remind us of 1 and 3, is once again a gorgeous brunette) sticks her head in the fireplace to get something that the spooky daughter threw in the back of it, and the unseen ghost turns the gas on - that's the stuff that works! The thing that will give you House on Haunted Hill (the remake) flashbacks - not so much. And not only is it not scary, but it also runs perpendicular to the very thing that made the original movie work: its natural believability. You could probably fool a younger audience member into thinking that the first film was a legitimate recording of a couple who got haunted, but even my infant son would recognize this one as a scripted Hollywood movie from start to finish. Recognizable actors, 3D, and CGI by no less than ILM itself will keep you from ever buying into the "reality" of the movie, which is the whole point of a POV movie in the first place. I mean, Christ, when you need the FX wizards behind Star Wars to create the scares in your Paranormal Activity movie, you're obviously doing something very wrong.
(Also wrong: needing three credited writing teams. To make a sequel to a movie one guy made by himself in his own house.)
It also has its own internal problems, starting with the vague characterization we're given for its leads. In a nice nod to Oren Peli's early days, the dad is a video game designer (or programmer? Bug tester? It's never clear, but we only see him frowning at an iPad once saying he needs to get the game finished, so it doesn't matter), but whatever mom does is a total mystery, and neither of them ever have to leave the house, I guess (the film never once goes beyond their front yard - even when they try to escape by going to a hotel, we just hear about it when they return, defeated). And yet, they apparently require a live-in nanny? Olivia Dudley from Vatican Tapes is always nice to see, but I honestly couldn't tell you why she needed to be in this movie, and the film offers no real explanation either. At first I thought she was a friend who was kind of always hanging around, but there's a scene where the little girl wakes up in the middle of the night and it's Dudley, not the mom, who comes in to comfort her. I also considered the idea that maybe she was just the wife's sister, but if so it's kind of creepy that the dad's brother would be hitting on her so much, as they were in-laws. So two stay at home parents have a nanny and a gorgeous, gigantic home (the little girl has a bedroom AND a playroom) with a Christmas tree that would make Clark Griswold jealous, and as always with these things also apparently live in a bubble where neighbors are never concerned with all the screaming and crashes that occur. Again: why operate under the guise of reality if you're more unbelievable than the average Arnold Schwarzenegger movie? Why not drop the video camera angle completely?
Speaking of the camera, I had to laugh at the idea that these folks were already filming every stupid thing they did for no reason BEFORE they find the box of tapes and magic video camera. Toby the ghost has incredibly weird luck when it comes to choosing victims, as they all just love filming things all the time. And yet it doesn't stop the brother from mocking the family from PA3, saying "Did these people just film EVERYTHING?" as he himself is being filmed for no reason (and this of course leads to the inevitable scene where a man tapes his brother and sister-in-law as they watch a tape of them watching a tape). Exposition is a frequent problem as well; Dudley is CLEARLY dubbed in one major scene, rattling off nonsense about the witch cult, and other bits of backstory reveals are similarly dropped in voice-over by dad or whoever is holding the camera. They also throw in the idea that Katie posed as a real estate agent to make sure that THIS family moved into THIS home, which doesn't jive with PA4's narrative. If you recall, that one took place in Nevada, so clearly Toby can get around - why would Katie have to go to all that (seemingly impossible) trouble to make sure this targeted family lived in that particular house? Couldn't he just go anywhere they ended up?
This is the series that killed Saw, which is amusing because it attempted the same sort of annual longevity and ran out of gas way earlier. Saw rebounded creatively with its 6th film (albeit not financially, that was the one that went up against the first Paranormal), but this, essentially Paranormal 6 since the "spinoff" Marked Ones ultimately opted to spend its third act bending over backwards to be connected, is possibly its nadir. Even Paranormal 4 had a pretty good ending (this one's is terrible, for the record) and the fun Kinect stuff - here, without 3D it will have nothing of note really going for it. I find it funny that they took down Saw but ended up with one less entry and not even half of the goodwill - people are still asking about a Saw 8, but I can't imagine too many people will be bugging Blumhouse and Paramount to continue the series after three dud entries in a row (Marked Ones was better than this or PA4, yes, but hardly a return to the heights of the first three, and the grosses were only half of what PA4 made, itself a major disappointment). Somewhere along the line they lost sight of what made the first three movies so successful and interesting, and ended up with a baffling, half-baked mythology that this finale only partially resolves. Maybe they're not totally ready to call it a day on this series, but I'm sad to say as a major champion of the original - I think I am. Good luck with the video game.
I've lived in my current place for exactly a year now (why I opted to move in October is a decision I will never understand), and I have yet to actually enter the "attic" that is accessible from the hallway connecting the bedrooms upstairs. I only own a little painter's ladder that's not nearly tall enough for me to get in there or even look around, and I usually have more pressing matters to deal with, so I just never bother to find a way up there. Best I can tell it's not tall enough for me to stand up in (even my infant son might bump his noggin), but it still kind of weirds me out, that there's this entire area of the place I live that I've never actually seen. And that may be why Hangman worked on me, because the home invader sets up shop in a similar (larger) attic space that no one in the house ever seems to check thoroughly.
Unfortunately the cops also neglect to give it a good once over, I guess, because otherwise the movie would be over pretty quickly. For reasons I'm not sure I totally understand, the guy trashes the place after setting up his cameras and attic "bedroom", instead of just leaving it as is so they wouldn't suspect a thing. Luckily for him, the cops that are called to investigate the break-in apparently don't check the attic, so I guess he was either VERY daring or just knew from experience that the LAPD tends to be lazy (I've lost count at how many times I've seen someone blow through a red light right in front of a cop who ultimately did nothing). Still, I wish director Adam Mason had justified this behavior in some way.
Oh, yes, that's the same Adam Mason who made Broken, which I dubbed the most worthless movie I had ever seen (and I watched it after coming home from Screamfest, if memory serves), and whose other two films I had seen showed little improvement. That, plus two warnings from trusted friends had me thinking this would be a disaster, but I must admit it had me spooked more than once. There are a couple of moments where you're watching a long take of the parents sleeping or something and then suddenly you realize that the Hangman has been sitting/standing there watching the whole time (night vision + unfamiliar room = your eye isn't naturally drawn to a completely motionless figure wearing all black), and I love shit like that. And it's thankfully short on violence; Broken in particular was one of those movies that equated torture with terror, but here there's almost none, and what little there is tends to be pretty quick. The film's opening, showing the Hangman finishing up at the last family's house (i.e. killing them) before moving on to this new one is a bit torture-y, with screaming and a knife being grazed along a terrified woman's body, but that's as harsh as it gets.
It's also surprisingly funny. If there's one justification for Hangman trashing the joint, it would be for the runner about dad Jeremy Sisto finding his daughter's vibrator when he goes to check her room. It could have been just that one gag, but it keeps coming back - she later asks if he "found anything" when he went in her room, and then he tells the mom about it and they make jokes - it's kind of endearing. The family unit is much more believable than many of these things; Paranormal Activity 2 in particular kept coming to mind (due to the x number of fixed cameras, but also the kitchen was very similar) as one where they didn't really FIT, but they had a trump card here - the kids are actually siblings. It's Ty Simpkins from the Insidious movies and his sister Ryan, and while they aren't the focus as much as the parents, their very (obviously) natural brother-sister love/hate dynamic works great, and as the parents Sisto and Kate Ashfield are also believably in the 16th or so year of their marriage.
Unfortunately an important part of the plot requires Ashfield to be home "alone" for big chunks of the runtime, because the Hangman eventually plants evidence to make it look like Sisto is having an affair (with a character played by Amy Smart, who is never seen close enough to know that it's Amy Smart*). So obviously Sisto's character is always off working late (which is usually movie shorthand for characters that really ARE having affairs), and she has to be the sort of movie housewife that is constantly collecting laundry from around the house and finding incriminating things (lipstick on the collar in this case). It's kind of a weak subplot, and in the post movie Q&A (moderated by some jerk) Sisto admitted that this family drama should have been worked into the movie earlier, since the movie has a big hurdle to clear - it feels long. The scares all work, but they're also a bit repetitive, and there's a lot of fat between them (SPOILERS AHEAD - skip to next paragraph if you wish!). There's a subplot with the daughter's boyfriend that seems to exist solely to give the movie a kill, and I couldn't help but wonder if the movie would have "needed" it if they had just moved things along a little faster. Or they could just trust in the audience enough to not demand bloodshed and delete him entirely, which would bring the runtime down a bit. Don't get me wrong - it's only 85 minutes, which is normal feature length, but for something like this, where you're looking at identical camera angles and a minimal cast the whole time, even 3-4 minutes could make a huge difference.
Speaking of the fixed angles, having the villain be in charge of the camera is a godsend, as no one has to pick up a camera to investigate a noise or whatever, but while that logic is sound some of their actions are not. Even when they know someone has broken into the house, they're a bit too cavalier about weird things that occur after that, like a vase disappearing and the OJ being on the counter when they go downstairs in the morning. There are three separate moments where the wife will inquire about something weird and Sisto's like "Hmm? I dunno." and not, you know: "Oh shit we still have a burglar problem!" As I've said a million times, horror movies kind of require that we drop our guard a bit when it comes to logic, but when it's a found footage-y type like this the problem is exacerbated, since it's being presented as reality. And the irony is, for these movies the logic problems are usually "why are they filming?" but in this one they're NOT so we end up back in the same spot we are for traditionally shot films. I have no answers for how to work around these things (they can't be too paranoid because they'll find the guy, but he has to do SOMETHING or else there's no movie), but I can say it's certainly a red flag for the movie, and the sort of thing that probably resulted in those friends all but begging me not to go see it.
But I think they were being ridiculous. Considering my very negative attitude toward Mason's other movies, I was certainly prepared to join their chorus, but I realized quickly that it was a lot better than they had led me to believe. Perfect? No, not even "great" - but for what it set out to do (creep you out, make you fear drinking from a previously opened bottle of wine, etc), I think it did it well, and as a fan of Alone With Her, I liked seeing another one along those lines as opposed to typical hand-held blandness. And it was still getting to me a bit hours later; I realized this morning that I never actually went into my office last night after coming home (as I usually do), and suddenly the movie's idea of someone hiding in plain sight in your home got spooky to me all over again. Hangman coulda been in there all night! *Buys ladder*
What say you?
*The character's extremely limited role in the movie led to a confused audience member thinking that the wife was accusing him of having an affair with their daughter, i.e. the only other female in the movie. That was pretty funny.
I will defend M. Night Shyamalan as a director to the death. As a screenwriter he... is imperfect, to put it nicely, but even his worst movies (Lady in the Water) display a great visual sense, careful editing, and actors giving solid performances (a bad director can make a good actor look otherwise - see: Phantom Menace). So it's no surprise that, like Barry Levinson with The Bay and Bobcat Goldthwait with Willow Creek, he has managed to rise above the trappings of most found footage/"documentary" horror films, due to actually knowing how to make a film and understand that the POV aesthetic is just another tool at his disposal. The Visit isn't Night's best film or anything, but it's one of the best of its type in ages, and should help cement a minor comeback for the once untouchable filmmaker.
And that was a relief, because I've been seeing the trailer for months and every time, certain moments got a big reaction from the crowd (with such dire releases as of late, it'd be more engaged than they ever got with the feature they were seeing). The grandfather sticking the gun in his mouth ("I was just cleaning it!") and the girl getting into the oven were always the big ones, and thus it seemed Night finally had a hit on his hands - it would have been a bummer if the movie didn't deliver. But with the pretty full crowd I saw it with, those moments and several others played just as expected, with one jump scare even startling me a bit, and another, more icky moment (for those who have seen the movie, the "You have a problem with germs, right?" part) had them all reacting as they should. I was actually just talking to someone the other day about how horror-comedies should be a bigger/more popular sub-genre, because if they're working right the audience will be laughing AND screaming. This one delivers that AND collective audience disgust (in that one isolated moment) as a bonus!
But I wouldn't call it a comedy/horror, as it's listed on IMDb. Night said he actually had a cut of the movie that was straight up comedy, and I'd be very curious to see how that would work. Sure, there are funny moments, and like 90% of these movies the first 10-15 minutes are loaded with "look how wacky these people are with their camera!" stuff, a tradition that goes back at least as far as Blair Witch (Heather goofing off with marshmallows comes to mind), but it's still a horror movie about two kids who are trapped with their increasingly strange grandparents. Their various health issues (discontinence for Pop Pop, sundowning for Nana, and dementia for both) are scary and SAD, not really funny (well, Pop Pop's discontinence is the butt of a few jokes, and yes that pun is intended), and yes, there is a body count (all off-screen, but still). Maybe it's a comedy compared to Night's other movies (The Happening notwithstanding) but the terror is always real - the humor all stems from reactions and intentional tension breakers - that's not a comedy, to me.
And now that I've compared it to Night's other films, I guess we have to talk about "the twist". I will not reveal it explicitly, but will talk around it, so skip the next paragraph if you want to go in more blind.
Ultimately we learn what Nana and Pop Pop are really all about, and I wrestle with the idea of even calling it a twist - it's more of the reveal at the end of the 2nd act that prompts what happens in the 3rd (it's not like Bruce Willis realized he was a ghost with 30 minutes left of Sixth Sense). Like a good twist, it might make you want to watch the movie a 2nd time, but only to double check that it never became impossible to work (as opposed to just spotting the clues you missed), so again it's not really a big "holy shit" moment. It's also not even that hard to figure out; I called it about 20 minutes before we are told, and that's without me even putting together one of the major clues until a few hours after I saw it. But I loved that Night seemed to be making fun of himself a little and setting the audience up for something more extreme than what it is, as Nana tells a very odd story about fish people (or something?) that I would be willing to bet was his way of acknowledging some of his past work while also trying to mislead us. It's an M NIGHT SHYAMALAN movie after all - aliens or monsters or ghosts or whatever the hell have to be involved, right? Even if you're smart enough to know that Nana's story can't be suggesting the actual answer, you're probably going to start thinking more along those lines than you already did when you saw his name in the credits, making the actual answer all the more satisfying. It certainly worked on one younger guy coming out of the film with his girlfriend, who told her that "Usually his twists are so fucking stupid!" after saying how much he enjoyed this one. Plus he doesn't dwell on it; we learn what it is and that's that - there's no one coming in to explain the entire backstory. You can piece it together with the info that's laid out and that's all you need to know, really (if anything, the more you think about it, the more questions you'll need answered to explain how it would have worked, so best to just not do that).
As for the POV element, like I said it works really well. I've read a few tweets suggesting that it's yet another movie that doesn't need to be shot this way, but not only does Night justify it several times (the girl is making a documentary about her estranged family, and also enjoys filming others but can't stand to look at herself), he also utilizes it better than most. So even if some of it IS a bit wonky (the chase under the porch, for example - why wouldn't they drop the camera?) he gets a lot more right than wrong, and I've always said that you just have to meet the audience halfway on these things. NONE of them hold up to total scrutiny, but so many don't even get the basics right that it's just relieving to see one that does (and then some). And even better, he actively refuses to do any of the usual shit until the very end where he kinda has no choice. The girl, being an astute filmmaker and documentarian, refuses to let the brother set a camera up to see what happens when they're not around - i.e. the thing that makes up the bulk of every Paranormal Activity movie. Likewise, and correct me if I forgot one, but I don't think there's a single moment in the movie until the big climax where a camera is dropped in such a particular way that allows it to see all of the subsequent action perfectly, another hallmark/annoyance of these movies.
I suspect it'll play even better to kids. The boy of the sibling pair is kind of annoying; the actor is good (and I appreciated that the two of them got along for the most part - it's not some bullshit where they hate each other but come together over their shared terror), but for whatever reason his main character trait is that he fancies himself a freestyle rapper. He's proud of his 347 Youtube hits for one of his videos, compares himself to Tyler, The Creator (!), and raps at least three times in the movie, including one over the end credits. He also has a bizarre thing where instead of saying "Ho" he will say female singers? So when he's freaking out he'll yell "Shania Twain!" or something? I didn't get it, and it was hardly my favorite part of the movie - but I'm sure 12 year old boys will find it funny enough, and the movie is definitely harmless enough with its PG-13 elements (Nana's old lady butt and one F bomb) that you can be comfortable showing it to your budding horror fan children. Devin compared it to Goosebumps, and that's apt - maybe a bit harsher, but definitely along those lines of campfire story horror, preying on basic fears (being away from home, strangers, etc). And unlike adults, they won't have that knee-jerk reaction to M Night Shyamalan's name, with some unfounded bias clouding the experience.
Now, if this is a hit, can we get that 2nd Night Chronicles movie? Been waiting five goddamn years!
HMAD-ing is actually somewhat expensive! If you can, help BC pay for his various movie-getting services (Netflix, Amazon, buying used DVDs, etc.)! Thank you!!!
Horror Fans