Found Footage February Day 11 Haunting of Grady Farm

Day 11

The Haunting of Grady Farm

With a title like that, you know you are either in for a fun treat, or it’s going to be like sucking ball sweat from an unwashed dong. Which is to say it will not be pleasant.

The fact this film is the first and last made by the director, either means they actually did vanish during the making of this. Vanished in shame after it was made, or retired having reached the top.

Any of that is entirely possible.

I kind of like that these films are like playing a deadly game of, will I eat a burrito filled with beans and cheese? Or will it be a burrito filled with habanero’s and regret.

Like you just can’t tell until you get into these and sometimes the trailers look pleasing, they look promising, and sometimes, they just look like something you recorded at a friends house so. Yeah.

So we have what sounds like the simplest of simple plots, the producer of a haunted locations show go venturing to an abandoned farm house and stumble upon some unfortunate things. It’s pretty standard fodder for Found Footage, but we shall hope they do something fun with it, or at the very least mildly entertaining.

I still hold out hopes one day of someone making, or myself making a found footage film that takes place in an adult sex toy warehouse and involved a cursed dildo. Until then let the dreamers dream, and the filmmakers present their offerings. It’s movie time.

The Film.

Welp. Starting off with some distorted footage and short clips of bodies being dragged off is. Always an interesting choice.

If you are teasing us with a hopefully spooky ending. You better deliver.

So what we have is the introduction of our group and slight show introduction. We have Ryan the cameraman, and Emily, the host and girlfriend of our cameraman. She is the host of their little production called Haunted America. A show documenting haunted locations across the great states of these united well you get it.

So our intrepid crew is prepping for an interview with Sharon Bortlip, who is going to be telling us today about what the Gaelic call Sluagh. Which to the unfamiliar, and I wouldn’t blame a lot of us for not being. It’s something from Celtic mythology that essentially is made up of the most nasty horrible bad not so kind creatures or undead that form, basically an army. So imagine Legion but not as Christian or as well grouped. The first time I heard the name was way back watching my cousin playing Legacy of Kain on Playstation.

What do they have to do with this? It’s genuinely hard to say. It gets mentioned once and then 8 minutes later we circle back to it. Because why not.

It’s odd editing but we’ll go with it. It’s just odd mostly because this film has a run time of one hour and 8 minutes. Which is not a lot of time to be doing odd editing.

BUT what we learn is that the haunted location we are headed for is the Grady’s farm, the very same farm of our films title. Surprising I know.

So miss Sharon gives a brief run down, and I do mean brief. I am almost wondering given how things are going so far if they’ll just be spoon feeding us little bits of info from that interview as we never see the thing in its entirety. We get just enough to hear that the Sluagh mark people that have desecrated sacred land, objects, had late fees with Blockbuster, and once you are marked by the Sluagh, they don’t stop, won’t stop, Sluagh for life.

It sounds really interesting and I’d enjoy hearing a bit more, giving us more a warning what is to come, as well as just how these dicks will die. Instead we are given a glimpse of the asshole most likely to trigger the Sluagh and curse them all. Charlie.

Charlie is an anomaly of dickishness that could only exist on film, and the armpit of California. I say that from experience as my sister had a friend. Not really a friend, but one of those guys who hangs out with people you know so therefor they invite themselves along and no one in high school really had the wherewithal to tell them get the fuck out. Until they go to far. This dude would try to push you to start a fight because he just liked pissing people off for no reason other than it entertained him the idea no one would ever do something. He was an early troll and once you let him know he was getting to you, he’d keep antagonizing you until he got you to walk off mad. Or end up punching him, in which case then he’d laugh say whatever and he’d say you’ll get charged with assault. The point is the guy did stupid shit that he knew would get him and others kicked out of places, just to see what they would do.

Charlie is that guy for us here. Case in point, he first comes off as a pushy but goofy dick, the kind of person you can stand in small doses, but quickly wears out their welcome after an hour. He’s pushy, brash, and thinks he’s charming as a dick. While stopping for gas he see’s their director playing with his fancy new HD camera and decides to swipe it from him, taking off for the convenient store and then telling us he is going to film in the girls bathroom. Because that’s a thing you’d totally do  in your mid twenties? He is not joking, and he just swings the door open, pushing the camera and himself in. Only to find three ladies talking to each other. But very quickly it escalates to all the women being mad at him, naturally, and of course the store owner and locals getting incredibly pissed at the guy, threatening to call the cops because what he did is actually a criminal offense. Several.

But he gets by, because their production needs him, for reasons, and our story needs him to be the one that molest whatever sacred item they find for him to desecrate or defile.

Thankfully they make their way out to a field, I’m…..guessing the farm field. Which oddly enough has active cameras high up in the trees. Which we discover as they suddenly click on once the group drives their Van onto the property and they pick a nice spot for a camp out. Because what would a found footage film be without a night of drinking and partying on someones property.

And sure enough, we are proven right on an earlier assumption. They are absolutely going to spoon feed us bits of the interview through the film, to help act as filler for what is to come. Which just so happens to be needed now, as we see off in the distance our group is being filmed at their camp out party and, for some reason, the  camera is doing that ol’ time favorite, digital distortion over some of their faces. Well this is picking up nicely, but what of Sharon you ask, what may she inform us of now, or continue rather to inform us of on the Sluagh. “Some saaaaaaay…they are demons! Some saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay….they are DAMNED SOULS! They’re stuck here ye see? Stuck between the heaven and the hell, to wreak havoc!! Them’s fairies with no rules! They ain’t just faires! They..they’re DEMON FAIRIES!! Demon Fairies wreaking havoc! Livin a no holds barred lifestyle! If ye cook toast, they’ll turn the dial up and burn it! Because they’re demon fairies kinda sorta!”

I am only 10% joking with that. Her telling of celtic folklore is like a drunk person relaying what a drunk Irishman told them at a bar, verbatim. Which a drunk Irishman is really not a drunk Irishmen, it’s just an Irish historian.

I’m Scottish, it’s my right to make that joke. YOU can’t but I can.

So these kids have to watch themselves, on a farm land we know nothing about, out side of it possibly being haunted, possibly having people vanished, and possibly people cursed and or dead. On a farm land, possibly haunted by Sluagh damned demon fairy souls. Maybe.

They’re just bad.

And they are lookin to do bad things. Fortunately to our group of dildos filming their show.

It’s just. Man they really are not holding back the lack of character all around for everyone. Even as bad as the guy was with filming the bathroom, Charlie is just pushed even further to the ‘Incase you forgot I’m the douchebag’, and it’s a bit of a sloppy setup where he will end up taking things. He’s also just that special kind of stupid you only get in shitty films.

First Charlie. It’s established early on that one of our crew mates is wishing to propose to his best gal on this outing. He’s been keeping it super duper secret, and only showed his bestest friend the ring, which belongs to his gram gram. So of course naturally, Charlie is filming himself the night of the party and tells us that he is about to film himself, going through the guys backpack in his tent. Why? Because he wants to see if that guy has a condom, because “I don’t wanna get this chick pregnant”, dude you know you are with this girl just to bang her, he’s even stated that fact. This guy would have condoms. Otherwise he’s just that stupid and a dildo, that he’d just figure she’d bring them or someone has to have them because why should he bother, even though he clearly doesn’t want to get tied down. So of course he stumbled onto the guys ring. Which of course means at some point and time, he is going to spoil the surprise proposal and everyone will collectively groan “Chaaaarlieeee” it’s just…well whatever.

As for the rest of this group. There really is no character for any of them. You got 40 minutes to play around with, and we clearly aren’t going to learn much to make us care about these people. But normally you’d have some sort of basis for the characters. Like the jokester, the caring sap, the innocent one, the asshole, the bitch. But no. These people generally are fuck nuts.

Which is proven on their first day of exploring Grady’s farm.

Or more aptly named, the moment we piss on sacred items.

These people, who told a local earlier. That they take this show very seriously, and are not joking about it or its content. Are going through a run down barely there building, tossing around an ancient looking wooden box with ‘celtic’ work on it, but not. They also discover a very dirty, very ancient looking book. With symbols and an oddly drawn lion. Which they try to uncover the name on and read from. Before getting tired with it and tossing the book like it’s a piece of shit. They also pretend to tongue kiss a doll missing its body, and Charlie is for once not to blame, they each take their own turn in pissing on anything that looks remotely ancient and meaningful.

Of course each time they do, we get a musical cue to let us know that was an ‘uh oh’ moment.

This film is getting to me a bit. The stupidity meter is ticking like a Geiger counter the further we get into this. Everyone goes from super caring we are super cereal about our job and show having a second season. To basically being ready to dig up a grave and take selfies with the corpses while using the skeletal hands to pick their noses.

On top of this. The cameras are acting even weirder. The static is growing the more they are near cursed items or I am assuming the fairy/demon/damned Sluagh. Which okay yeah that’s expected, that makes sense. But at the same time, as they are actively filming? The camera is not just showing digital distortion, it’s also showing more than a few second long glimpses of peoples deaths. Dead bodies, people screaming. It’s just.

Okay in our last movie you had a cool cucumber who was pushing off made beds being unmade, and odd noises, while getting slightly worried at seeing a hooded figure in his room. But it took sleepless nights and discovering the woman he met was trying to curse him to freak him out. That makes sense.

These fuckers are seeing as they’re filming their own deaths and the deaths of others played out on camera, and they can only respond with “uh, yeah something wrong with the camera” yeah no shit, you are getting glimpses of your future. Not crossing signals with someones cable box. And while one man. Has the thought to see what is wrong with the camera, how to fix the camera, and seems deeply concerned over what is happening. He’s immediately bitched at by our shows host, because she wants to begin shooting at this large oak tree that is of great importance for reasons, and the sun light looks perfect so. Basically he is told “Do the thing!” and expected to make a static happy camera, suddenly stop being static, and stop showing glimpses of hellscapes and people dying. Good luck with that.

If things seem to be a bit everywhere? It’s because it is. Now our last film had a similar approach, but a much better done and edited approach. What’s happening in here was a choice. Whether it’s an artistic choice, or stylistic choice. It’s mostly like the rest of the film, a bit of a cluttered mess of events and forgotten characters.

I mean this is a show they shot for, A show about haunted locations across America. They are here in Florida to investigate Grady farm. They should be doing so. We should be getting background into this and show them reporting. Show us the farm. Fill us in on why we are here.

What we get are bits of the one good interview they were able to record for this film that looked professional, and the way the person presents information is just. Cluttered. This wasn’t edited as a found footage film, this was edited at an attempt of a stylized horror film.

So what is the importance of the giant oak tree? Don’t know.

They find it, freak out over it, and only one of them seems to know what it is as she says “You guys THIS is the tree”, and the next time their one interviewer Sharon pops up, she’s telling us how the tree apparently is the doorbell for the Sluagh. Telling us “When the tree was burned, it rang and it woke the Sluagh”, why was it burned? Don’t know. But it marked the family and death, death, death.

What of the group as they investigate and attempt to film the tree? They don’t do either. As I mentioned their camera is showing images of the damned, and the only other working camera they have is in the hands of Charlie. Who is sat on top of the tree to shoot at a better angle, which he doesn’t.

Because as we are now one working camera down. That means Ryan must dig out his third camera. But alas it is missing from his bag and in place of it? Where the camera should be in his bag. Is a dead rabbit, stuffed into the spot marked for the camera.

The group then decide it must be Charlie, being Charlie. That he took the camera and pulled a goof, killing a rabbit and shoving it into the guys pack. So they all turn on Charlie. This is what happens when you are known in your group as ‘That guy’. So the group argue and eventually decide to leave the tree and continue marching back to their camp. However not Charlie. He announces that he is taking his girlfriend back to the tree, implying for all of the group that they are headed there to fuck. Because what even is a shooting schedule for a show.

A show on its second season, aired on a network.

Anyway.

Of course we get to see Charlie with his pants down, hammering his girlfriend Ashley against the sacred tree. Of course we get to see a static dark figure appear in the background as he does so, marking him by the Sluagh. Because what else do you expect when you fuck against a sacred tree when you’ve already shit on everything else there.

It’s also worth mentioning that the group is still absolutely being filmed with the missing third camera, by a yet unknown and unseen person.Which gets confusing as it mostly happens at night. Which another in the group also records at night. It’s never really specifically stated and when you see something like a camera recording outside their tents passing each one as they do, Only to back up when hearing someone is coming out for some water. You would assume ah, okay. Bad person or thing recording. But no it’s Ryan. Because filming ain’t nothin but something to do.

The group are not actors, they are reactors. Charlie, who knows he is being blamed for the lost camera as well as stuffing a dead rabbit inside Ryan’s pack. Is the only person given any character, who consistently stays in character. Even when you wish he wouldn’t. That night he makes a grand entrance to the camp with a camera, which immediately upsets everyone especially Ryan, because he’d set the camera up for time lapsed recording. Charlie simply tells him that he is sorry for taking the camera, but he would like everyone to know that it accidentally recorded him banging his girlfriend, and that they should all gather by the fire to watch. Yes it further upsets everyone.

Oh yeah, what about the guy who was going to propose to his girlfriend, did he ever manage that? That was a thing in this movie right?

Well he awkwardly took her into the woods earlier that day. Being recorded by who fucking knows as we never find out. But gosh darn it, he lost the ring somehow. Don’t worry it’s not Charlie using it for an appropriately sized cock ring, he just forgot it in his tent.

This is a mess.

The only thing that happens that evening aside Charlie being a dick for the sake of being a dick, is we see his girlfriend talk about wanting to go back to the tree, at night. Because it’s so beautiful, and then she tells Charlie she’s going to pee so she takes off. Yes this is the last we will see of her. Yes he also had no problem having her walk out into the woods, alone, without a flashlight, or anything to guide her. Which no one else thought was odd. Obviously they wouldn’t because women have cat like vision at night.

So the group wake up to a missing Ashley, Loverboy tries to propose to his girlfriend again but comically is interrupted by everyone looking for Ashley. Seriously it feels like this was meant as an inside or running joke about him proposing. It just never launched, or crashed and burn. It just sits there on the launch pad.

So Ashley is dead, somewhere. We just have to find her, and wouldn’t you know it? We do. She is found hung by the neck, with mossy vines from the sacred tree she was fucked up against. What follows can only be described as a human comedy of events, as Charlie shows emotion at the discovery of his bed buddy as he called her now dead. Another person climbs the tree and begins cutting her down. While Emily shouts about how the law states you do not touch the body, and if it is a crime scene you do not disturb the evidence. But the man did already start cutting so why stop now. They get her body down. For some reason someone believes doing CPR on a frozen corpse left out for 9 hours is a good idea. It isn’t. They drag the body thinking to take it with them. Until they argue that they should leave it.

Two girls in the group decide they can stay with the body, while the others seek out help. But they are immediately over ruled and told nuts to that. We’re leaving the body here and getting the fuck out.

Which is a plan, and a thing they decide to do. The scene plays a lot better when you add in into the background the song Yakety Sax.

So this begins our third act of a short film somehow feeling long and lost. But seriously don’t stop playing Yakety Sax. I honestly feel you will appreciate this next few minutes all the more if you increase the playback speed, and play the song.

What follows after the dumping of their semi friends body. Is the group wonders off to their camp site. Only to discover their camp site is no more, All there stuff is gone, and though we can’t see it, it’s apparently strewn about in the trees. And their fire pit, which is still smoking though it wasn’t supposed to be, is baren of any logs or circle of stones. So what do they do? They decide lets keep going and run to the car. Which is rather hilarious itself. Not just with Yakety sax playing. But the scale of the car. Well we’ll get to that.

They run and run until they reach the car, and what should happen but the car is on fire, completely destroyed and still honking its alarm. Now the funny part about that. Is that it is not the same car. If that was the car they managed to fit 6 bodies into earlier? It would’ve been an incredibly impossibly cramped ride. It’s the art of “Dude there’s an abandoned car out here, we can set it on fire for your movie”, which I would not put past them.

SO, once again having their plans thwarted. What can they do? They decide like Forrest Gump did, to keep running. But before they can do so and ruin the name of a good film. We get demon growls and screams in the woods. Which is not really accurate of the subtitles to say. Since we were told by Sharon that the Sluagh are demons/fairies/damned souls. So you know, mark those screams appropriately.

Well since they can’t run up the road they used to get there. They must run elsewhere. Which is where the film decides again to interject some more of Sharons interview. Because they want to set up what will come next, as well as what I am sure is going to be a super duper twist we can’t see coming. As they run, they end up running across the large open field once more with a motion activated camera again. Which is then appropriate for Sharon to pop up and tell us now that. The Sluagh are also like vampires. In that they need to be invited into spaces. Otherwise they are closed off to them.

So now the Sluagh are Demon/Damned souls.Fairies/vampires.

She also throws out there with a long series of winks nudges and nods the line “But if someone is marked by the Sluagh, how can they survive never leaving one place” something like that. Basically we are setting up the possibility that the camera recording these people is that of one of the last surviving Grady people, who made a sacred closed off space of their home somewhere, and its kept the Sluagh from claiming them, and I am sure these dickless wonders will ruin that for him/her.

Well providence abides! We can stop the Yakety Sax music as our group has come across a home in the woods. A very clean home that they were not allowed to mess up for their film, It’s also worth mentioning if you look at the windows on the house? You can see the reflection of the director with his arms crossed smiling watching the filming. It almost looked like they were inside the house and the light was just shinning through enough of the window to illuminate that fact, but nope, reflection.

So with demon/damned soul/fairy/vampire growling and howling behind them. The group are left with little choice but to bust open the door to this home and let themselves in.

What they find is a hoarders paradise. We have a rabbit hung in the kitchen bleeding as it was being prepared for a meal. We also find the missing B camera Ryan was missing, and we also find a scruffy woodsman with a shotgun. He’s the only calm person, and the one guy that is someones family member who they felt would be perfect for a hillbilly. But he isn’t. He’s just an outdoor guy.

But yes he’s also a Grady. Which we aren’t explicitly told, but we can gather because two braincells can spark that realization and we. Well, all of you have many of those. Many, many of those.

We are told his is a Grady because, well low and behold what Sharon told us was indeed a setup. This Grady has been hiding out in this house in the woods, and killing little animals for food. It’s funny because the man is so quiet and calm, and not threatening what so ever, even while holding the shotgun. Everyone else is freaking the fuck out and when he quietly, calmly tells them to quiet down and get down. They freak out even more like it’s opposites day.

He gets to deliver the age old “You all don’t even know what your dealing with do you? Your marked now. You don’t even know it.” And sure enough because they busted open his door and invited themselves in, this somehow completely undoes the whole invited in vampire thing. So the Sluagh are inside and get to kill Grady, no big loss.

Everyone is out running wild at this point and Someone gets their neck snapped and falls dead, I assume at least. Because someone just drops suddenly and the others act like “OMG WTF” and continue running. We now get more screaming, growling, and people suffering. We see someone on the motion camera fall to the ground and swarmed by black shadows while someone quietly moan roars in the background.

What’s left of the group, who followed someones screams, run off in one direction, only to find themselves back at their campsite. Which is now perfectly back the way it originally was. Nothing missing, a nice fire going. Everythings coolbeans.

Except for Andy who is losing his shit because he didn’t get to propose to his girlfriend who is likely dead now, so he decides to take it out on Charlie. Because apparently she was with Charlie and she ran off her own way because she didn’t want to be left in a survival situation with Charlie. Which I mean. Fair.

And for the joy of those who needed to see it. Andy beats the shit out of Charlie. For all the reasons.

So as Andy leaves the camp site, on his own, to find his girlfriend so he can propose to her again, we get another scene with Sharon. Because why the fuck not. Tell us Sharon the wise! Share with us your wisdom! What have you to add?!

She just wants to tell us that yeah it sounds like hocus pocus bullshit, but she’d rather be safe than sorry and believe its real. Be respectful and with all the dozens. DOZENS of missing bodies all tied to the farm or from it. Well it’s hard to ignore that as just a coincidence. Thank you mighty Sharon for Sharon thy wisdom.

Nailed it.

So Emily and Ryan are off running back to the house. Because she remembers the shotgun toting Grady man, he had a shotgun. So they should go back to the Sluagh house and get the shotgun. So they separate from the group as well.

At this point, only good things can happen.

Which they sort of due. I mean Andy found his girlfriend, granted she’s dead as hell, but he found her so. Guy can still propose to her if he really wants.

Emily and Ryan found their shotgun naturally. And the dead body of Grady, of course.

What better combination could you ask for than a scared out of his mind man with a shotgun. Well certainly Emily thinks that’s fine as her man is going to protect her now. So when they hear a noise at the front door, does Ryan investigate? Well kind of. He approaches the door with the shotgun and chooses the shoot first ask questions never approach.

Congratulations Ryan! You killed Andy who came to the house carrying the body of his girlfriend he may or may not have popped the question to when he found dead in the woods.

Well that eliminates that survivor. We are now down to three people. Emily, Ryan and Charlie. Charlie runs into the pair and for someone who has seen some frightening shit, and is scared out of their mind. Charlie is holding a half smile on camera. Again, these are friends, not actors.

The three continue their theme of running until they find of all things, a car. Not just any car mind you either. But a car that looks sort of just like the van they used earlier, only dirtier. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t.  It almost doesn’t matter.

What matters is the group is on their way to freedom, so they turn on the radio and slowly safely pull out and head into the woods. Or they would have if not for the fact the car died. So Charlie volunteers to pop the hood and have a look. Yeah Charlie is dead, and thankfully because of the hood we didn’t have to worry about seeing the Sluagh, we just get to hear growling and cronching.

Suddenly the bodies of Andy and his dead girlfriend are in the back seat of the car. Don’t worry they aren’t animated. They just lay there for effect. Emily freaks out, her boyfriend tells her he loves her, moments before sluagh drag him out of the car window to his death, and soon after Emily follows as well.

Well we can’t very well end things mercifully there can we. Nope. We need Sharon, because Sharon is everything. Sharon is all. Sharon is the light.

What has she to say about this? Nothing. Just that she believes there is enough about all this that rings true to her enough to make her wonder. She also adds with a chuckle how she’d never be caught on that farm”, she thanks our crew for interviewing her and taking an interest in all of this. She appreciated the interview and wishes them all well.

With that we get our last couple of shots. Which make no sense, but also all the sense. We have the camera being recovered from the car, and set on the hood. We barely make out two vehicles, but one is a fire truck. Two men in full firefighter gear approach the man with purple gloves who found the camera and the three have a distinct conversation . But we can’t hear a word of it. However the mic is working, as we hear very clearly the sounds of nature around us. But for some reason we just can’t hear three people talking 5 feet away.

Well whatever, the films over. The Sluagh win the day and no one is going home happy, except Sharon. Bless her and all her glory.

The End

This was a mess.

This was a jumbled mess of ideas, thrown into a pot. With people who thought they were being clever and added more ideas, and gathered the equipment to film those ideas, without any context or structure.

The people in this had no visible character traits, they didn’t really even have personalities. They just had roles.

By that I mean, and I’ve seen this first hand with a director who I will not name because the movie I was in that they made should never been seen or promoted by anyone anywhere ever. But the guy would grab people and say “Okay so, you’re the good guy, you? You are an asshole so, be kind of a dick, and you are the cool chick. Okay lets film”

It really carries that strong vibe of having happened and just letting your friends go wild with it. Which you know, hey. If they enjoyed themselves while making this. Great. But also shame on you.

But good for you.

It was just releasing this on the world that was a mistake.

You had something there, Like there was a movie in there somewhere. But it never got treated like one. And I believe the cause for that is simply because they didn’t know how to do so. They didn’t structure it.

The only thing that actually looked well done, but also suffered from being just specific lines of dialog which do not work at al as a whole when you put it together, is Sharon’s interview. It’s well lit, it’s a nice camera. Someone got to show they knew how to film and setup for that, with appropriate lighting. But everything that came out of Sharon. Was a sequence of lines used to tell us the next part in the story. Which as I said when you put together and see as a whole, as an interview. It is a jumbled mess. It’s not an interview so much as someone giving their thoughts on a topic and impression before saying farewell.

These people are supposed to be professionals working on a tv show about hauntings. It’s an empty concept. They set it up. They show an edited on the tv intro logo for the show. But past that. It’s dropped and forgotten.

Again the actors are told “You host the show, you run it, its important for you, so be bossy”. That’s all Emily did. She grumbled about the timing, getting cameras working for a shot, and that’s it. She’s reacting not acting. She’s trying to take a prompt and start  something. But it fumbles for everyone.

What was meant to be a show about a haunted farm, never was. You have the introduction of the idea that it is, but it gets quickly abandoned and turned into friends hanging in the woods fucking with things. If this were a show, a show about haunted places. Would they not film little snippets around say the abandoned building they found? Or when they arrived on the farm? Wouldn’t that be a good chance to set up a scene or two giving us background into why they are there? What the significance of the place and scene is?

You film that. Film those little bits, add in after them bits of Sharon and her interview talking about those same locations, then you cut in scenes of them exploring and behind the scenes.

THAT creates a structure and coherent narrative. That gives you a scene that works and helps invest your viewers in the story you are trying to tell. Instead someone may have misunderstood the Blair Witch and just ran with the idea of ‘Well that director didn’t have a script for them for a lot of the film, he just had them act off each other.”

Yes, he did do that, but he gave them something to go off of, those kids had talent, and. Even bigger. They also filmed scenes talking about what, why, and who were the reason they were there in the first place.

They actually showed us what brought them there, told us the story of why they were there and the sites significance. They invested you in the story, it prepped you for what to possibly expect and look for later. Sharon and her interview did not do that. It just told us what’s going to happen before it happens.

I don’t know, but I can imagine, that this was a film made by someone in a film school. Using the schools free resources, and a student discount to rent some equipment, and they filmed this. It just has a lot of strong vibes of, they had an idea, but they didn’t really have the full skillset to see that idea through. They lost track of it and did what they could in the end.

It just didn’t work.

The movie was an hour and 8 minutes. That is incredibly short for a horror film, and the past two films we’ve reviewed were about 20 minutes longer. But those films? They felt short. This film did not. This film felt like two hours.

It was just, yeah.

Just did not work. It was boring, scenes went nowhere and clumsily flopped somewhere. You can tell the scenes they had in their mind by watching these. If you look at it through a lens, you can see what they were trying to do. What they wanted to film and how it would play out. It just wasn’t executed. All the scares, the popping up at the end of dead bodies, and having them posed or suddenly standing. They weren’t filmed at a proper angle in some shots so you don’t see much except a vague outline which wasn’t really as effective as it could’ve been. Other times when they were posed in spots, it just looked staged versus creepy and the shots were so quick you didn’t get to let them settle in and take much effect.

The effects work on some of the shots were nice. The bullet wound, the blood streaks on the body in the car. All that looked fine. Just everything else was what went wrong with the film.

If this had been done by someone with a little more experience under their belt, or a different, better crew. It could’ve really been something. I’ve seen similar found footage films that told this story far better and sometimes with a little bit more running time. Others only 6-8 minutes longer and it still worked better. This just sadly did not.

Again, it’s not the worst, by far. But man this was hard to get through. It just didn’t get up and go. It just aimlessly wondered around unchecked.

Which is sad. But oh well.

Sometimes its better to take your time, and assuming a genre is easy to shit a film out, is not always as simple as that. Sometimes you need more input from sources other than friends who just want to be in a movie and be ‘that guy’. And sometimes you need something to carry your idea, like a story.

Let this film be a learning experience for you if you want to make a film, or let it serve as a cautionary tale.

You could even use it as a coaster for your drink, and that still might be too gracious a thing. But at least you can say it’s the one time this movie carried something.

Until tomorrow, don’t do what these people did. Do better. Try harder.