Why Found Footage Horror Can Work

Hey guys! Let's go buy a video camera so we can film everything!

Awesome. Make sure to film awkward interactions with your family and friends. After all, anyone who gets a video camera is suddenly overcome with a childish, two-year-old-style desire to play with it 24/7 and film every little fucking thing.

We might run into some bad, scary stuff later, but it's okay. That comes with the territory of owning a video camera these days. When you're running away from whatever Eldritch demon you somehow conjured up with your own tomfoolery, you won't drop the camera at all. You won't miss a goddamn thing. And even if you die during your chase, your camera will be found by magical film-fairies who will edit the footage together in a convincing manner AND slap a "Based on a True Story" title card before it all, as if anticipating a major theatrical release. That makes it super real. So real, you guys.

I laid on the sarcasm pretty thick there, but you get what I mean – those are the worst things about found footage films. I've seen a lot of dumb movies that do this shit. I used to be really dead set against this whole style, and it made me miss out on the most interesting things about movies like Paranormal Activity. Recently I've had a kind of change of heart on these kinds of movies – there are still things wrong with them, yeah, but also plenty of ways to do it right.

I've said in the past that these found footage shaky cam movies are a product of who we are as a people right now, and it's true. We are millennials, as much as I personally hate that term after reading one too many think pieces about how we're all lazy fucks, and one thing we do differently than other generations is recording ourselves.

Whether it's Facebook, Twitter or Tinder, we love using the Internet to show off what we find unique about ourselves or how we're feeling. We put ourselves at center stage at all times. These horror films take that and put a morbid twist on it, putting characters at center stage, filming themselves, even as they're dying or coming face to face with horror. That's fine because everyone is like that deep down – we all sorta view ourselves as the main characters of our own films. I don't think that's specific to just millennials.

The point is, this is a trick that can be done well. There are a lot of films like The Devil Inside, Apartment 143, The Taking of Deborah Logan, the last two V/H/S films and plenty of others that do it wrong – they're just shitty scripts and shitty movies, with little creativity or nuance. The camera gimmick is stretched thin in all of them and there isn't enough quality there otherwise to make a difference.

But every once in a while … you get a really good one. People, I'm talking about The Houses October Built.

Director: Bobby Roe

Starring: Brandy Shaefer, Zack Andrews, Bobby Roe, Mikey Roe, Jeff Larson

IMDb

I guess it's a good thing found footage has kinda been fading out of style recently in favor of artier flicks like Starry Eyes and It Follows, because now we can distinguish The Houses October Built as the kick ass movie that it is. This is a pretty stripped down story about a bunch of friends going on a road trip to do a bunch of haunted houses. As a self-professed lover of haunted houses myself, I was all over this shit.

It's just a well done movie. The dialogue feels realistic and you get to like the characters, who really just act like regular people you'd see at your job or at a local band's show or whatever else. That takes some talent to do.

The scares come slow and creepy. You really get a sense for the atmosphere at these haunted houses, which I understand were all real places the cast members went and filmed interviews at. It's playful ambiance, and transitions almost seamlessly into the scary bits through little, eerie moments here and there. The pacing is very good in this. When the scary shit does start happening like a landslide, it feels natural and you do actually feel as claustrophobic as these characters, trapped in horrible places.

Since the topic of this article is the found footage, well, the handheld camera perspective actually works for the movie. You get a sense of being right there with these people. The interviews with haunted house cast members are also cool and add a spice to it that a lot of these movies miss – very individual.

I guess some of the scenes on their RV feel a bit silly when they constantly have the camera on, like even at breakfast. Maybe a better idea would be having those parts as a normal movie without the camera, but I guess for that 'realistic' effect, it's not too bad - still better than the ways some movies do it, mostly due to the realism of the dialogue and how much you end up liking these people.

That's really a minor thing though, and overall there are comparatively few moments that feel really forced or silly with the camera – certainly no Paranormal Activity moments where they grab the fucking camera before going to see if someone needs help. And there are actually a few times later on when they do turn the camera off when they're asked to for secret haunted house business. That's really something more of these movies should try – it leaves the imagination wanting more and it's actually realistic. Most of the time, people in real life aren't gonna want you filming everything.

The really scary moments at the end feel extra seedy, dank and creepy as fuck with the low-res camera lens and the realistic audio, so points for that.

People will have mixed reactions to this, and if you don't like American haunted houses and that kind of shit, you might not get it. But I think it's one of the better movies of its style out there. It's on Netflix, so you can go watch it right now. You know, unless you don't have Netflix or something like that. In that case, I guess you're fucked. Sorry.

Found footage horror isn't dying out yet, and I actually think they're getting better now than they were in the mid-to-late 2000s. This one is my favorite I've seen recently, but other ones like Grave Encounters and The Den, despite having problems, are certainly worth a cursory view if nothing else. So don't write off the style yet even if you hated all of these movies I've mentioned. It might come out with something that interests you eventually; you never know.

Images copyright of their original owners; I own none of them.

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

The following account is a true story of one reviewer’s quest to review one of the most famous horror films of all time. He was never seen again and this is the last known record of his existence on Earth. Do not read this review in the dark - this will be your final warning.

I arrive in Burkittsville early in the day and get a cup of coffee from the local diner, black and steaming. The waitress is middle-aged with dyed brown hair and a pleasant face. As she pours my coffee, she asks what my business in town is – this is a small town where everybody knows everybody and they spotted me as an outsider almost immediately.

“I’m going to find the Blair Witch,” I say.

The look of horror that came over her wrinkled face then was palpable.

“Oh, my,” she says. “Are you sure you want to do that?”

“Sure am,” I say.

“We get some tourists doing that every year,” she says. “Lot of em, they don’t come back. Or if they do … well, they’re not the same afterwards.”

I feel a shiver down my spine, which I ignore, and put on a steely smile. “Thanks for the tip,” I say. “But I have to do this.”

As I leave, I feel her eyes boring into my back.

The Black Hills are big and dark. Even though it is a sunny day, it looks overcast in the woods. One could get lost in there, I think. I can’t believe the size of these woods – I mean, it’d be easy to get lost in there. Especially if a witch supernaturally enlarges the size of the woods and makes it impossible to find my way out. But I need this experience to make sure my review is all the more credible!

I look at the woods and feel an acute terror. I can’t believe what I'm about to do. I take a couple of steps into the woods. The air is damp and the ground crunches and crackles under my feet with each step. Around me on all sides the woods stretch out in an inviting manner, saying come in, come further.

So I walk a few steps in. Then a few more. Then I am completely surrounded by woods. I keep going and after about ten minutes I come to a flowing stream, crystal-clear and odd amidst the eerie woods. At the bank of the stream is a small bundle of sticks. I pick it up and pocket it - maybe it'll help me get some inspiration later on while writing.

I decide I've got enough. I leave the woods and head back into town. Maybe, I think, I'll come back later on, in the dark when it's really scary. Take a longer walk then. Yes, that will add the right level of credibility to this whole thing.

I check into a hotel room at the nearest hotel to the woods, and once settled in for the afternoon, I boot up my laptop. I find The Blair Witch Project on Instant Streaming and turn it on. It's time to get down to business.

Directors: Eduardo Sanchez, Daniel Myrick

Starring: Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, Joshua Leonard

IMDb

The film begins with a text blurb saying the characters in the film went missing and this is the only proof we have of the events that unfolded. I sure am glad the Blair Witch gave back their camera so we could see this movie! Otherwise I don’t know what we would’ve done. Also, yes, I totally believe a film distributed by Lionsgate is actually a real story found on cameras once owned by missing people.

Then we get our main characters playing a game I like to call “Camera-ception” – where they film each other filming one another.

After that, main characters Heather and Josh meet up with their other main character-slash-friend, Mike. Or as they call him, Our Little Mikey!

Truly a dignified and adult nickname.

That truly is the glare of death – are they sure THIS guy isn’t the killer in the film?

We then get some interview clips that educate us on some things – like that camera angles for documentaries in the past were getting it all wrong, and THIS is the real way to do it:

Ohhhh yeah. That’s some good documentary makin’ right there. If you don’t tell your interview subjects to hold the camera tilted up at a close-up of their faces, it’s just not as real. Almost as interesting as the only redneck white trash trailer park home to have an American flag in it. I think that’s worth noting because patriotism is at an all-time low now in this country.

Sure the flag belongs to a crazy tin-foil hat old lady who thinks she's seen Bigfoot, but ... it's still a ringing endorsement for our country! Really!

But enough of that nonsense. We do get some stories from old people in the movie about how there were several grisly murders in this town in the past. I’m sure glad these people weren’t part of the committee to make the town’s new promotional “welcome” video – I don’t think stories about that crazy time a guy kidnapped and ritually murdered a group of kids is exactly good PR.

In other news, crazy ladies who work at coffee shops AREN’T the most reliable sources! This one talks a lot about how she believes in “witches and ghosts and stuff like that.” Oh, really? “Stuff like that”? Please, tell us more about stuff like that – the viewers are waiting with bated breath. Then maybe you can show us your tinfoil hat collection and pictures of that time you visited Area 51 and thought you had an extraterrestrial experience in your sleep, but it turned out it was just some guy robbing your purse from your hotel room.

We also get a story from an old crazy woman about how she once saw a really hairy woman in the woods. Uh, excuse me lady, but they’re making a documentary about the Blair Witch, NOT about the secret origins of Ellen Degeneres!

In the woods, they wander around for a bit and show off their hairy chests and what not. Given that the Blair Witch was just described as being covered in thick, dark hair, I think they should start looking at the possibility of this guy being the killer more seriously.

Get your man boobs out of my face.

I dunno though; I’m mostly just waiting for these idiots to run into the cast of the 1981 Don’t Go in the Woods in this forest. Surely they’re built around similar agendas – I mean the killer in THAT movie was a hairy bigfoot as well; it’s pretty fucking similar.

So they manage to get lost within the next five minutes of the movie’s screentime. In the movie it’s supposed to be like a whole day, but it’s funnier to say five minutes, so that’s what I’m going with! You could also say that it’s actually the Witch messing with their minds and making them get lost in these woods that, apparently, aren’t all that small. And I’d agree with you – this aspect of the film is well done, creepy and effective.

However, for the humor-related purposes of this blog … man, these must be the biggest woods in the world! Or they’re just the worst navigators in the world.

I do have a bit of justification for that one – I mean, when they lose their map and Mikey eventually confesses to getting rid of it on purpose, we find out that apparently only Heather knew what the map actually meant and where they were going. Because you know, that’s a good contingency plan for going out in the woods! “Hey, let’s just make sure our only means of knowing where we’re going is confusing and nobody knows what it means except one person! Also, let’s make sure one of the guys that DOESN’T know what it means is the one who holds onto it!” “Awesome; we’ll get lost and die for SURE now!”

Also, Mikey seems to be taking Nic Cage classes, judging by his constant maniacal laughter and random forays into screaming his head off. That’s always good for a documentary, right?

A man truly in his element.

They also keep finding little bundles of sticks in the woods. They think it’s the Blair Witch, but I think it’s the Monty Python reenactment of The Crucible.

Josh also goes on a long-winded rant about how his girlfriend will notice if he’s gone. For some reason this goes on for quite a few lines of dialogue. Oh, really? That how it works now? Your girlfriend will notice if you go missing? Well, color me surprised. Unless your girlfriend regularly talks to the wall and confuses it for you, then I guess that’s just a strange thing to have to point out to others. Maybe there’s some insecurity at play here?

***

I hear a rustling noise outside. I pause the film. I look out the window and am surprised to see that the hotel is bordering on the forest – the trees are less than ten feet from the window. I could have sworn they were further away when I first came in. I think perhaps I simply misjudged the proximity of the woods. It happens sometimes. Maybe I'd been so preoccupied on the review I just had not noticed. That's plausible, right?

The noise must’ve been a branch, I think. Scraping on the window. I’ve seen Poltergeist. I know this whole rigamarole!

But was it just a branch? Or is there something out my window? A shadowy figure, perhaps – lurking between the trees, just out of my line of sight?

Are my eyes playing tricks on me, or is the movie getting to me? I suppose I have been doing this a long time, after all – maybe I'm finally coming a bit undone. Out the window it looks dark now, and pregnant, swelling clouds have usurped what was a pleasant sunny day.

I shrug it off. I need to finish the review. That is the main goal – I won’t, and cannot, let anything else distract me.

***

We continue the movie with the characters descending further into arguing. Josh says if Heather keeps on filming shit, he’ll THROW HER INTO THE WOODS. Grr, manly threats! Except it’s dumb because, you know, they’re already in the woods.

Meanwhile, Mikey is upset because they have no more cigarettes. What kind of backwoods convenience store is this? No cigarettes? Well, I’m certainly not ever shopping here again, no thank you very fucking much!

We're lost in the woods with no hope of getting back AND there's no cigarettes? If you don't fix this problem we'll MAKE SURE YOU KEEP BREATHING! DAMN YOU!

How the hell are they even still filming at this point? It’s been like two days and counting and the cameras show no sign of dying even though they’re constantly filming. Is there just a bunch of hidden power outlets out in these woods? Hell, just slap an ad for batteries over top – Duracell: it’s now Blair Witch accessible!

Also, this is now a documentary about women crying.

Apparently, Heather and Mikey keep getting turned around and ending up at the same place they started even though they traveled all day in a straight line. I would say this is horrifyingly creepy and macabre, but really it’s just what I told these kids before they left – shoulda brought a GPS.

We then see something finally happen as Josh goes missing in the middle of the night. Heather and Mikey wander around shouting his name at the top of their lungs. Mikey, exasperated, then says “Josh would have told us where he was by now.” Yes, that Josh was always known for telling people where he was. It was one of his defining characteristics. Except, apparently, where his girlfriend was concerned.

I will give this movie one thing, though – it at least isn’t relying on jump scares to constantly move the plot forward. Maybe if it was made ten years later it would have, but fortunately this was made in a time where jump scares were not quite as comparable in value to the lowest form of currency in another country while you're broke and living on the streets in America.

In case you’re wondering when they’re going to stumble onto the Voorhees shack with Pamela’s decapitated head inside, it doesn’t happen. But we do get the discovery of some of Josh’s clothes as well as some bloody teeth.

That’s it, put a search out for this guy!

You know, it’d really be funny if Josh had made it out of the woods and was safely back home with his family eating Cheerios by the time the rest of the movie happened.

We then get the final breakdown of Heather as she makes a video apology to everyone she’s let down through her mistakes in the film, including her parents and the parents of the other two characters. It’s an affecting and somber scene, especially in the raw darkness going on – it really makes the best use of the low-fi camera format.

Having a close-up on one eye was the best way to get the apology across. I totally see why she chose this. And yes, I realize she is supposed to be in extreme emotional distress during this scene, but I don't care; that shouldn't stop her from making better directing choices. For shame.

Then they come across a decrepit old house and, feeling they have nothing left to lose, just go in anyway. They hear some screams from upstairs, which I’m pretty sure is just the filming sessions from another movie, but they think it’s Josh. They go upstairs, but get separated. When Heather comes back downstairs, it seems Mikey has been sent to the corner for being a bad boy:

That's what you GET for taking too much ice cream before dinner, young man.

Heather falls down, and drops the camera, which now means the movie is over. What, you’re not going to go all Cloverfield on us and show us another shot afterwards of them all being happy, to juxtapose the two scenarios? Pfft. So disappointing. I mean, the way this ended as is, it was atmospheric, unsettling and really underlined how hopeless and dark the whole thing was. But I NEED to have a hokey un-subtle shot of them having fun and smiling to point out that they had lives and happiness before the movie's events; otherwise I just don't get it!

***

I’m typing the conclusion to the review when I hear the next crackle of the “branch” outside, banging on my window in the wind. My head snaps up. There’s a rash of goosebumps on my arm. There's a heavy storm outside, having crept up on me as I was enraptured by the movie, and the wind is whipping like mad. I rub my eyes – it seems there’s something out there in the woods, standing between two tall trees – a black, hooded spectre with clawed hands … but the window is dripping wet with rain and I can't see clearly. When I blink, the figure is gone.

I turn back to the computer and start to type, but my mouth is dry. I get up and pour myself a glass of water from the mini-fridge. I drink and the water cools my throat – which has become oddly parched over the course of the film. It is as if I myself have been as lost in the woods as the film’s characters, deprived of food and water. My stomach rumbles and I put a hand to it – a shaking hand, trembling with fear. My head feels light and fuzzy.

There’s a loud bang against the window, and I jump near clean out of my skin. I go to the window despite every nerve screaming for me to run, run right home and never look back. The figure is there now, and closer! I can see it’s a feminine body-shape, and beneath the cloak she has pitch-black, mottled fur which I imagine is wet with blood.

No, I think – stop, damn you; stop having such wretched thoughts. Stop imagining such horrors, for they will come true. It's just a byproduct of sitting in the dark and watching the damn movie for so long.

I close my eyes and expect the figure to be gone when I open them, but when I do she’s still there – this malefic black-cloaked horror with clawed hands and fur covering her whole body. I can’t see her face and I don’t want to.

In a fit of energy I run. I throw open the door and run down the hall, which becomes a blur of velvet-red carpeting and golden stripes on the walls. I come to a stop when the hall dead-ends into another hotel-room door. It is with an acute sense of terror that I realize it’s my own. I’ve run down this hallway, sprinting to get out into the world, but come back to the very room I was just running from!

I open the door, for there’s nowhere else to go. It’s my room, only my computer is now gone. I look around the room and it’s not there – it’s simply vanished. And out the window the hooded spectre looms. I feel the inevitability of death creeping up on me. I look out the window and this time, clear as day even in spite of the torrential downpour separating us, I can see her face – and oh it is a hideous sight to behold.

I turn and face the wall – anything to get away from the awful sight – and then the blackness comes and devours me whole.

Images copyright of their original owners; I own none of them.

REVIEW: V/H/S 2 (2013)

While the first V/H/S wasn’t anything intellectual, it was a fun anthology horror flick that called back to the 80s and pulled off some interesting twists with the handheld-cam format. There was a lot of energy and it was a great flick to sit back and drink a beer to. So how about we make a sequel with a bunch of short films that play like outtakes from the first collection? It’s more like the table scraps of the first V/H/S rather than a legit sequel. Let’s just get this shit over with.

Directors: Simon Barrett, Jason Eisener, Gareth Evans, Gregg Hale, Eduardo Sanchez, Timo Tjahjanto, Adam Wingard

Starring: Lawrence Michael Levine, Kelsey Abbot, various others for the other shorts

IMDb

So yeah, we start this off with some idiot filming people having sex in a motel. He gets caught by the cleaning lady and, at this point I realize it’s how the director of this film made excuses to his probation officer. “I wasn’t making a porno! Uh, look, I spliced in some of my friends’ homemade horror movies! It’s art! IT’S ART!!!”

We then get introduced to our main character Larry, played by Lawrence Michael Levine. Heh…yeah, I’m real sure him playing a character with an abbreviated version of his own name was such a stretch. He’s going to some house with his girlfriend Ayesha, where they’re being paid, I guess, to look into the disappearance of some kid. Larry says that “the cops wouldn’t care about some missing college kid” – heh heh, well you’re of course completely wrong and stupid, but okay. They get to the house and the girlfriend decides to sit down and watch some videos…

Badger from Breaking Bad, noooooo!

Yeah, apparently that’s supposed to be the kid they’re looking for. So what, the first movie had a relatively simple, unobtrusive wrap-around story about crooks finding some dead guy’s house with a bunch of evil videotapes. This one has a stupid hipster looking kid who probably just smoked too much weed and passed out in the basement reading Ayn Rand.

The first story we get is about some guy who’s getting a new bionic eye with a camera in it after an accident. Pretty interesting set-up. I do think it’s pretty stupid that they apparently waited until AFTER they put the damn thing in his head to tell him that they’d be watching his every move. The NSA's latest master plan! I can't wait for someone to blow the whistle on this one and then spend the next several months globe-hopping the world. Eh. Personally I’d take looking like the cover of a bottle of Captain Morgan over having a bunch of old perverts watch me take a shit every morning.

So he goes home and immediately begins to see ghosts everywhere, turning this into a low-rent version of The Shining. Probably still more enjoyable than Stephen King’s 1990s TV remake though. All I can think is how jealous I am that this douchebag has such a nice place, though:

Seriously, what the hell? What does this guy do? Is he some kind of rocket scientist? My guess is he’s probably just some rich kid who never bothered to come out from the shadow of his parents’ checkbook.

I guess the ghosts begin to freak him out until this one chick shows up at his door. She comes inside, demands a beer and then tells our main character that she has a cochlear implant that allows her to hear ghosts. If that isn’t stupid enough for you, just take a look at her idea of how to “cure” seeing all these ghosts:

Yup, her way of getting rid of the ghosts is to take off her shirt and fuck the main character, because…well, I’m guessing the director was forced to put some cheap tits in the movie just in case the audience was getting bored in the long gap between the last tit shot and this one. What a great reason to put something in a movie. Oh, did I say great? I meant cheap and useless.

“But wait,” you may be claiming, “what if it’s done for story purposes?” Well, just take a look at how well that idea worked to ward off those pesky ghosts…

...she's supposed to be drowning there, if you couldn't tell.

Yeah, the ghosts start killing them almost immediately after they finish having sex. Isn’t that just amazing? We see the main guy finally get fed up with it all and cut the eye out of his head. It doesn’t help though, and the ghosts kill him anyway. What a happy ending.

I figured out later that this guy is actually director Adam Wingard, who had nothing to do with writing this segment. He also did some good shit with the first V/H/S and made one of the best segments on ABCs of Death - keep up the good work, dude; you are cool.

Back in wrap-around land, Larry tells Ayesha to keep on looking through the tapes so the film can keep going. Oops, I mean “in case they find something about the missing kid.” Uh huh. Sure.

Next we get a story about some guy with a bike helmet cam for absolutely no reason, telling his girlfriend how much he enjoys riding around in nature in the morning. Of course we then see him truly enjoying nature by riding his bike to the tune of loud, disjointed electronic dance music – there is no greater way to show man’s connection to nature! None!

Then he gets turned into a zombie by some chick with a serious biting fixation. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have a zombie movie told from the POV of one of the zombies? No? Well too bad.

Then they crash a birthday party. Oh no, some guy that looks like The Rock isn’t too happy that zombies crashed his kid’s party!

What are you doing with that truck? All I wanted was a slice of cake! Stop it! No! Noooooooooooo----

Oh okay, so he survives that too. He gets a call from his girlfriend which reminds him of all that he’s lost. So then we get the first ever on-screen zombie suicide. Geez, right after the first robot suicide the other day! Isn’t the world such a bizarre place?

Back in wrap-around palooza, Larry finds Ayesha with her nose bleeding and says something about how they left her medication at home. Because it’s such a great idea to leave her all alone in a house full of creepy video tapes where a kid may or may not have died, he does exactly that, going to find her some medicine at the nearest drug store. She pops in the next tape.

And okay, so this one, “Safe Haven” is the one most talked about in this entire collection. I gotta level with you though. It’s really not that good. I know people like this one quite a bit, but I don’t know. To me it just comes off as a long, boring, self-indulgent trudge. But far be it from me to get ahead of myself; no no – let’s go through this whole thing step by step. Get your pill boxes and glasses of wine ready. You’ll need ‘em.

So it’s about a bunch of journalists, I think, after some story about a weird Indonesian religious cult. They talk to their leader at a café and find out that yes, he really is every single cliché you could think of with a character and plot like this. Mousy little dude talking crazy about how there is a literal afterlife to which he will lead his followers like sheep across a valley? Check. All that’s missing is anything of interest.

So they convince him that they’re REALLY OBJECTIVE JOURNALISTS, and yes that does need to be in all caps, and so they can come into his crazy temple of insanity and film shit. And that’s what they do. Even though right away they set about showing exactly why they’re not objective by asking questions about why everything is so crazy. But how can you blame them when the little girls at this place talk about how this cult leader guy is actually just a creepy pedophile? It’s not like there’s anything to be said for actually being truthful and just showing no bias when doing a report like this, right? Fuck it. We need to show off how morally superior we are!

So objective. You're the master of journalism.

Hell, most of these bungholes don’t even stick closely to the interviewing for long enough for it not to devolve into a soap opera. Two of them go outside and end up arguing about how they got pregnant even though the girl is with one of the other guys in the crew. Isn’t this just the perfect place to argue about this shit? And oh yeah, we gotta have the fucking camera on when arguing about it, just so the guy the chick is actually dating can overhear them while out getting some batteries! Hey, weren’t we making a movie about an evil religious cult? Nah, that was too fucking boring. The soap opera shit, though; THAT’S where the money is! Genius filmmaking.

"You're just mad because I'm an exact replica of M. Night Shyamalan!!!"

That’s the thing, too – the first V/H/S mostly stuck to one camera to tell the stories, resulting in some very clever set-ups. This one has multiple cameras and switches between them like a regular movie would. So what’s the point? The only interesting aspect of the style of the first V/H/S film was the one-camera element. Without that, it’s just a bunch of hackneyed shit. Are you seriously telling me that these people all died horribly and bloodily and then some asshole took the time to splice together the footage from their cameras into one home movie? Give me a break.

So yeah, the whole place just goes insane and turns into a really lame haunted house ride, like something you’d see at Universal Studios’ Halloween Horror Nights. The one stoner moron of the group is stuck with crazy religious psycho while he pauses the interview to begin the apocalypse.

No, seriously. He begins the fucking apocalypse. He says some magic voodoo horseshit over the loudspeaker and then everything goes crazy. When stoner moron tries to interrupt, crazy religious psycho doesn’t like that, and rips off his shirt and stabs the guy in the throat on camera, just like that.

The Hangover did it better.

That’s the other thing with this story. Were they just planning to do this all along, even if the journalists did remain objective and treated them fairly? What’s the point of even having these people even come in if you’re just going to kill everyone, even your own followers, that same day at apparently a very specific time? “Hey, this is our judgment day in which hell will take over the Earth, but I think I’ll invite some stupid kids with cameras in!” It’d be one thing if this was some kind of elaborate set-up, but it’s not – at the beginning of this mess, the crazy religious guy was reluctant to let them in because the media usually portrays the religious cult in a negative light. SO WHAT THE HELL IS THE LOGIC OF PROVING THEM RIGHT? Isn’t going insane and stabbing people exactly the kind of negative stigma you didn’t want? There’s really no way of making this logical in any form. There’s no excuse.

It’s just so odd of a time frame – this is the day we’re going to end the world and kill ourselves; let’s invite journalists to do a TV interview? What if the journalists had scheduled things a day later? What would the crazy religious cult’s calendar look like then?

But hey, fuck it, who needs things that make sense? Let’s have a bunch of guys shoot themselves for no reason.

That's just what (insert Indonesian stereotype here) does to you after too long! PS, I apologize in advance to the country of Indonesia.

And let’s have an execution-style lineup that one of the main characters stumbles upon, and the guy just lets him live for no reason – or just because the film needs to drag on and on forever.

And I mean it DRAGS. This thing never seems to end! I’ve watched two and a half hour films that go by faster than this! Ugh, so what, they strapped the pregnant girl to a table and let her give birth to a demonic black goat? How utterly unexpected! Maybe she wasn't just cheating on her fiance. Maybe she she had some, erm, extracurricular interests in terms of who she was sleeping with on those lonely week-nights...

What happens on the farm, stays on the farm.

Some other shit happens, but who really cares? I don’t. Next scene.

Back in Everybody Loves Wrap-around, Larry returns and finds Ayesha unconscious on the floor. Being a genius, he of course shouts for help in the house they’ve broken into; the one that has already been established to be empty. I’m sure that will do you plenty of good, you imbecile. So then he takes her to the hospital and saves her life.

"Hmm...nah, I don't really care. I feel like watching some movies!"

HA HA! Just kidding, he sits down and watches another videotape. What a worthless piece of crap he is. There are no words for how much I don't understand any of this right now.

But hey, at least the next short is so stupid it will numb your brain to any perceived inconsistency in the wrap-around’s plot…

You know what was wrong with the rest of this movie? The camera work was too visible. It wasn’t nauseating and shaky enough to make you feel like you were trapped in a dice box in a game of Dungeons and fucking Dragons or something. I’m so glad the final short decided to rectify those mistakes!

This one is about…aliens or something. There isn’t much to be said for it because not a lot happens. Bunch of kids play pranks on each other like a rejected 1980s comedy sequel, and then aliens show up and kill them. Some of this could have been effective, as they have a nice setting and the colors and lighting are pretty cool. But you can never actually SEE anything going on – it just becomes a bunch of shaky-cam nonsense, making Cloverfield and [REC] look like masterpieces of calculated and well-paced cinema.

Jesus, this is annoying. And the wrap around segment ends with that kid Larry and Ayesha were trying to find becoming a zombie and, I guess, killing them or something. He gives a goofy thumbs up and then a crappy punk rock song plays over the credits.

You know, I think that last bit sums up the movie; it really does. The first one, while campy, at least didn’t have any outright silly moments like this, practically winking to the audience in that lame self-aware mode. Horror got lame when that kind of thing was introduced. And the ending of this one sums up the entire tone – jokey, hokey and lame as hell.

I mean, OK, it’s not unwatchable or anything. Despite its problems, there was still actual effort put into this, even if it seems pretty minimal overall to me. But it’s just so weak. The writing is a pretty half-assed attempt at horror comedy, and while it’s not all bad or anything, it’s not very good either, coming off as insecure and insincere – these kinds of “self aware” horror comedies always seem like the makers would be embarrassed to be caught watching any of the movies they’re parodying.

The only exception is “Safe Haven,” which isn’t goofy at all, rather just boring, poorly written and overly long, riddled with plot holes the size of minivans. It’s just a piece of shit. I know people like it and all, but I really can’t get behind that one at all.

Well, that's V/H/S 2. Aren't you just looking forward to the endless run of less and less interesting and well produced sequels in the next few years? Ugh. I'm just going to bury my head in the sand now, and pretend the first one was a stand-alone film.

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REVIEW: Trespassers (2006)

So, what happens when you have no budget, actors that you stole from your next door neighbor’s backyard porno shoot, action scenes you can’t see because everything is dark, camerawork that looks like a drunk person did it and a script likely written on the back of a Burger King napkin, all complete with a plot only thrown in at the last fifteen minutes? Trespassers! I really don’t know what else to say about this, so I’m just going to jump right into the fun! And oh what fun it's going to be...

Director: Ian McCrudden

Starring: Cigarette Butt, Evil Overlord Chicken

IMDb

We kick off with our main hero, cigarette butt:

This movie's fetish for extreme close-ups is disorienting enough, but this has got to be the silliest one in the whole movie. Why do we need a close-up on the cigarette? Is it going on a great adventure? If so, I'm sure it will be a more interesting one than what we're going to see in this movie...

And one of our other minor-ish characters, Tyler, played by close-up camera shot #3 out of about five billion and twenty-seven. We also see some great stock shots of people surfing on waves, probably lifted off a commercial for sunscreen or something. I'm sure if you look closely, you'll see the airbrushed-out logos for whatever company this movie stole these shots from. At night, Tyler and his girlfriend maybe have sex, or they could be just looking for their lost car keys; I don’t know, it’s too hard to see anything really.

CAR KEYS! Without them how will we drive away from this movie after we're done moving around in a tent and vaguely touching each other sometimes?!

Then they get killed off by poor lighting and shaky camera effects in the dark. Yes, that is literally what kills them. No, I am not exaggerating for the comedic purposes of a review. Or am I?!

Also I’m so glad we can’t see anything during any of the action scenes in this movie. I think seeing things in films is overrated. It just smacks of mainstream pandering and commercialism. True films rely on atmosphere and the implication of things happening for the viewer’s mind to process, rather than spelling it out for them like they’re two year olds, and showing them actual action. And that's why Trespassers is a good movie!

So anyway, we then get introduced to our real main characters, Colin, who wears a white cowboy hat that I think the makers of [Insert Generic Cowboy Porno Here] forgot to get back from him:

There’s Ashley and Rose, who are about as generic as female characters can get and talk about almost nothing but guys the entire movie:

And then there’s this guy, who they only call Lucky, and who I think is half raccoon:

Lose the eyeliner, you retard. You look like the vomited-out spawn of a thousand emo kids circa 2004. But then again this was a 2006 movie...if it was 2012, he'd probably just have a plaid shirt and skinny jeans and big thick glasses even though he doesn't really need them!

They’re getting ready to go when they run into the Generic Best Friend character Javier, who likes to run out in front of cars apparently, even when he could just have stood on the side of the road and waved. This character I am pretty sure was one of the director’s friends, because otherwise I don’t see a purpose having him in the movie…

So the team is off and they drive and drive for a long time, without establishing anything that would make them likable. Lucky continuously flirts with Rose even though she doesn’t reciprocate or give any indication that she’s ever going to. Lucky really has no character aside from just being a weird pervert – isn’t that just great? He’s like Pepe Le Pew. Hell, he even kind of looks like him!

They keep on driving and bickering and what not, and honestly, I have to wonder after watching some of these scenes: how long until they get killed off? I mean, most movies at least try to have SOME form of humor or something to make the characters at least watchable, but this? This has nothing so far! Just endless whining and bickering from these people who you’d be embarrassed to be seen with in public if they weren’t so good looking!

Like take this one scene – the girls get back from a two-second detour into a bar for shots (yeah, THEY know how to have fun!) and find out that their car is gone and Lucky with it. Two seconds later, they find him getting beat up by some guys because he tried to heckle one of their girlfriends, thinking she was a prostitute. Did he think he was going to get laid in the five minutes before they got back on the road again? Jesus Christ, dude. Keep it in your pants a little longer at least! And is it bad that I was really rooting for the guys heckling him to kill him?

Then they see a chicken on the side of the road:

See? A CHICKEN! I'm pointing this out to you because, apparently, the film couldn't have survived without this close-up shot...which establishes that yes, a chicken is indeed a chicken. Unless the movie is actually trying to tell us something...like, perhaps, that this chicken is actually the evil mastermind behind everything!

...and after a silly and pointless scene where Lucky jump-scares the girls in the bathroom, they see some guy eating the chicken…or rather we hear them say  that’s what happened, because it’s too dark to see what actually went on, probably because that’s just how good this movie is! Afterwards, though, the film ruins that brilliantly suspenseful scene with some dialogue that I think a fourth grader could have written better.

JAVIER: Now, now, you can’t understand [eating a live chicken] until you’ve been in their shoes…

ROSE: No, if I was starving, I’d just grow some vegetables!

You’d grow some vegetables. Right. Because that just happens instantaneously and totally is a short-term solution for starvation…can somebody please just kill this girl? We do get this gem of a line from Lucky, though: “I’ve heard of sucking cock, but this is something else!” That’s actually a little bit funny.

In the car, Colin and Ashley talk about some boring crap about how he doesn’t want to go back to school because he got a new construction job offer instead. What’s this, character development in my shitty slasher/monster/whatever horror film? TAKE IT AWAY! The film apparently listened to me, because none of this is ever mentioned again. Ain’t that just the best kind of character development? The kind where it feels like they just said at the last minute, “Oh, wait, we’re supposed to make people like these characters before we kill them off? OK, throw in a three-second scene with no screaming or tits in it. There we go!” Ha ha ha…I feel my brain melting as we speak.

They finally arrive at the beach and Lucky begs Rose to flash him. She says no but then for some reason gives in, telling him to turn off the camera he has, which he doesn’t – and this is an important plot point, durr hurr hurr, spoilers! Why did she even flash him to begin with? Because…the movie just needed an excuse for tits. Maybe the director had a crush on that girl or something. Lucky goes and jerks off by himself until he sees something strange on the camera. Instead of going straight back to the others, he gets killed off! Yay! Or maybe I was supposed to be sad…

I mean seriously, you come on a trip with these "friends" of yours and then spend the whole time jerking off - WHO DOES THAT? Oh yeah, this guy.

…no, I stand by my first reaction.

Afterwards, we see Rose flirting non-stop with the other guys, because being a catty bitch to one guy for perving on you and then turning around and being a slut to the other guys in the group makes sense, doesn’t it? I guess you’d call this character a total waste of breathing space. If only we could actually see more of her death scene later on…oops, did I spoil that for you? I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.

After that, the movie remembers that it was supposed to have a plot. They split up into groups of two, so Javier and Ashley go one way while Colin and Rose go the other, still bickering about relationship problems the whole time. Friends going missing, mysterious monsters in the wild…and relationship problems. Truly these things are all the same level of importance! In one scene, Rose asks Colin if he wants to skinny dip, right as she’s putting her clothes back on from before. Did anyone even bother telling the writer that he was drunk off his ass while writing this?

In another scene we see Ashley and Javier talking to a local Mexican couple at some diner, where the dialogue is all in Spanish with no subtitles, so suck it, Americans! This movie’s too cultured for you. It’s got other languages in it!

Ashley says she understood part of what they were saying, about the monsters that come out at night, but it turns out the monsters come when called, and they kill off Javier with more shaky-cam dark shots that you can’t see any of. Back at camp, Colin is now on his own and he meets back up with Ashley. She tells him the whole story of the monsters – huh? I thought she only understood PARTS of the story! But now she just recites the whole thing in incredible detail…either she’s the biggest liar in the world, or this movie just blows. Verdict’s still out on that front.

Was it that hard to check this in editing and make sure you could see everything? I just don't get this movie's philosophy of not being able to see the action. Maybe there's some good atmosphere in this! But you'd never know, since this whole thing is about as obscure as a lost 1970s disco record.

Anyway, the story goes that a long time ago, this cult led by a Marilyn Manson-esque figure called El Gringo came to Mexico and tried to “live off the land,” but quickly found that there wasn’t enough to live off of. I guess planning and geographic knowledge wasn’t their strong suit. So the El Gringo guy started secretly kidnapping children from the local villages and feeding them to his followers. They found out and proceeded to do the rational thing – cut El Gringo’s eyelids off and bury him in a hole to face the sun forever. Which…makes them better than him HOW exactly? I really don’t see how that’s a good solution. What kind of justice is that? It’s so oddly specific, too…they don’t just stab him in his sleep. They actually torture him and then leave him for dead in the middle of nowhere to go blind. That's pretty harsh. But hey, it still beats a bunch of idiotic teenagers having sex with his corpse and making a secret cult out of it. That would just be silly...

And…somehow I guess this all means that people can turn into zombies now. Makes sense to me! Let’s have a finale full of more shaky cam too-dark nonsense, followed by a finale where they run into El Gringo and, I guess, get turned into monsters afterwards. But we’ll never see any of that, because the movie is over and sentenced forever to no-budget horror hell!

Mostly this was just kind of a shamble. It had potential, but was ruined by the annoying characters and the fact that you couldn't see anything during the action scenes. But I guess there is something to be said for the fact that the camerawork in this was better than in Silent House. And my biggest disappointment about THIS was that the El Gringo character was behind everything, as opposed to the evil chicken from before. Don't worry, my poultry overlord. I know you survived being eaten somehow. And your army awaits your magisterial return.

Only the lost hero Cigarette Butt can save us now!