Found Footage February Day 17 Unaware!!

Day 17

Unaware

Well, this was a film I was very…unaware of.

I was also largely…unaware that there were some fun stories involved in the making of this.

I find myself quite the opposite of…aware, when it comes to what to expect from this.

You might even go as far as to say I may be completely, totally and utterly….clueless on this film.

Seriously I’m not gonna carry that joke, it died on arrival, but I took it as far as I could Mr. Frodo.

So yes this film. One I’d never heard of before, but I noticed pop up a time or two. The poster had me curious, the premise sounded very open to good possibilities, and the thing that really got me interested to watch this was. Well.

Should you venture off to IMDB, Wikipedia. Anywhere about this movie?

You will find no cast listing.

None.

We have two directors. Sean Bardin, and Robert Cooley. Sean also wrote the film.

But not one, single actor named. No crew, no staff. Just the director and writer, who also were the executive and main producer, the only other name we get is a footage editor, Richard Allen Crook. Even better yet, when asked about the film and those in it. Both parties have held conflicting stories about it. One claiming its real, the other not wanting to discuss it. The only tie the film has with the world of found footage, is the fact Oren Peli, who’s worked on the Paranormal Activity Franchise and helped produce The Bay, they were apparently contacted for…sales agent advice.

SO the film has a good aura of mystery around it in the department of selling what its presenting itself to be.

Which has my hopes in the “Lets go” group, but I am also prepared for this to just possibly fall into thee “The idea was better than the execution” zone. So, let’s find out and start this hard to pinpoint film.

So, in the immortal words of Nintendo’s favorite plumber, Chris Pratt, Here we go!

July 16th, 2010

We are being told this movie was compiled from roughly 3 hours of footage and presented raw and unedited. Which this footage, just so we know. Has not been altered or presented with any special effects. What we see, is what was actually filmed. So you know, keep that in mind.

What we have here is, a boyfriend and his lady friend, driving to his grandfathers home in Texas. It’s the worst idea.

I mean visiting family with your romanceable companion is definitely a step up in your relationship game, but it’s not a bad thing, So long as you are aware what it means. Because rest assured, one of you will absolutely know how to take it, and so will your family. No the bad idea comes from the fact that they are arriving completely unannounced. Yes, the best kind of plans you could make for the weekend are always the ones where no one is expecting you to show up, and you just impose on everyone, only to ask once you are there “Hey I hope this is cool, can we stay?”

It’s something some of us have family that likely have or still do, do this. But for those unfamiliar well. You are. Certainly missing out.

For now it’s a nice drive through Texas. We are getting at least a little background info. Mostly that our boyfriend who’s name is Joe. Well Joe has a grandpa. Grandpa Roy. Grandpa Roy is a swell guy, pays his taxes and lives life like an honest American. He works for the government apparently and I am sure that will have nothing what so ever to do with anything that happens as the film progresses onward later.

We learn that he was always very tight lipped about what it was he did, saw, and worked on for the government. Definitely not a plot point what so ever. Nope. We also get his girlfriends name, it is Lisa.

Lisa is nervous about meeting his grandparents. She also is a logical minded lady. At least it would seem as such, for now. She too questions Joe about arriving unannounced at his grandparents home. A home mind you which he has not visited in over 15 years apparently.

I’m not saying he should call every month, but sweet Jesus man, 15 years and no real contact, you might wanna at least make sure they’re still alive.

All that really matters and is being setup here, is that these two have been dating for a long, long time. But his family has never met her, and this is part of Joe’s Surprise filled weekend. Also not at all concerning, but Joe also tells us Grandpa Roy keeps a loaded shotgun at the door.

What could possibly go wrong. Between a family member visiting out of the blue unannounced after 15 years, for the first time. Showing up on private property of a former government worker who worked on classified project. Randomly popping up at your front door with a woman you’ve never seen or heard of before. This is all sounding like a trip to the Emergency Room, or the start of a very awkward and appropriately short pissed off weekend.

But Joe with all the reassurance of Tommy Wiseau in The Room, tells his babe not to worry about it. He loves his darling, and his grandparents will love her too. Which is…okay so this is obviously not a good idea, but Joe does not give one ounce of fuck. This man is giving off the kind of energy that says he’d walk onto a military base just to see how far he’d get before getting shot. Then wonder why he got shot for trespassing onto a military base.

Oh look he’s trying to drive to a military base and is surprised when he can’t get into one and is met with armed resistance. I know this takes place in Texas, but this is a special kind of Texas stupid we are dealing with, and I’ve met people from there who I wouldn’t put in the that stupid area. Not without effort. Which this man seems full of.

But hey we can only hope for the best down the road with these two and I hope we get that as the film progresses.

Spoiler alert. It doesn’t.

I have watched 34 minutes of this thing, and words…words.

Fuck me running with a pogo stick, this is gonna be pain.

Forget anything I said earlier about this possibly being fun. This is nearly a cure for insomnia and I believe it is infectious, with stupidity.

I feel like John Crichton in Farscape, trying to tell people about the wonders I have seen. But bare with me as I backtrack and know, as you should if you watched this before the review. That this is not going to be a fun time, nor an easy to recall time.

It’s just pain.

So our couple arrives to the home of gram gram and peepaw. Only to find it oddly empty. Well it’s not odd, it would make sense if you called ahead or had any indication from family members that they were still alive and living at this house. But yes, no one answers the gate, no one answers at the door. It’s empty.

They apparently left for the weekend. They know a turd when they smell one and they left.

SO now that they have no one to surprise, surely that means they will go elsewhere. Right? Wrong.

These people, oh I’m sorry. That’s wrong of me. I shouldn’t rope Lisa into this. Joe. Joe decides the logical thing to do here is obviously let himself in.

If they haven’t changed the location of their spare key, Joe is going to indeed locate it, get into their home, and he and his bae will stay the weekend, unannounced, in his grandparents home. This concerns Lisa. She does not think this is right. She is correct. She tells him this is a bad idea, and ask Joe, “Won’t this upset your grandparents if they come here and find us here?” he smiles and tells her yes it will, yes they would be upset. But he doesn’t care. He reassures her that, as long as they don’t make a mess, they’ll never know they were there.

None of this is good, and I am sure their neighbors. Which they have and in clear site. So I am sure that their neighbors will absolutely noticed 2 strangers in their home. But it’s fine. It’s all going to be fine. Because Joe doesn’t care.

Nothing happens.

These two explore the house, and nothing happens. For minutes on end.

Now that is not uncommon for found footage films, you get the mundane day to day, and you get the, well like Blair Witch showed us, the filming a bag of marshmallows just to act like a stoner saying the name repeatedly. Only this time, we have Joe establishing his lifestyle of ‘Sure it’ll piss someone off, but I don’t care”, as he opens their garage to show off a beautiful car, a charger I believer. Which he tells her no one is allowed to touch or start, and how they’d likely dust it for prints.

But Joe doesn’t care. He’s going to start up the car because he’s a man and he loves classic cars he could never afford. It’s becoming a running joke at this point that Lisa will say “Babe don’t do that, won’t they be mad?” and him smiling and saying “Yeah they will, but I don’t care.”

There might be a good reason he hasn’t seen them in so long, it might be that they shot at him until he scurried off their property because he was sticking his dick in trees and shitting in the sink because, he doesn’t care.

Only two things are important of note. Which is already a stretch because this is…this is becoming a chore.

Both things of note, are hilarious for a few reasons, which we shall get into because, it’s all we’ve got at this point.

First up we have Joe and the reason for this surprise filled weekend. Joe is planning to propose to Lisa. A girl thus far established as someone he’d only been dating for a while, and has not met his family. I know it can happen, especially when you are in college, out of state and such that’s fine. But this story isn’t adding up really. But who cares.

It’s a funny scene because he has, made dinner for them. A romantic dinner, and he is using one of his grandparents bottles of wine. Which I will also note they are using the incorrect glasses for but hey, that’s just me.

Lisa returns from the video store in town, having rented a movie for them to watch, and wouldn’t you know it, it’s a chick flick. Because oh that girl, you let a woman go to the video store and she’s gonna bring in a chick flick. Which the movie isn’t. They’ll bring it up later, but it’s actually a very good film, a far better one than this one, and one they had no right ever mentioning in this. It’s Roman Holiday.

Anyway the fun in this scene begins once she accepts the proposal with as much believability as a woman saying “Babe it’s not small, I’d rather it be that size versus it being too big, it’s fine”, As the excitement of the proposal passes, and the couple begin their dinner, thus begins our fun, as the pair sit at the bar table, two plates in front of them, full glasses of wine, and joe says “Dig in”

Dig in.

Their plates are empty. What romantic dinner do they have for the night? A night after proposing to your girlfriend, now your fiancé?

Cheese and olives.

I lived with a woman I dated, twice my age. On weekends, she would pick up a bottle of wine, some gouda cheese, crackers, and we’d watch a movie. This was normally done a while after dinner. So that way you can enjoy some nice cheese, and get a little tipsy and not care.

I’ve also dated a woman who loved eating salami slices, olives and cheese, with wine. But she only would ever do so after dinner, and on the weekends when we weren’t going anywhere that evening.

Never have I ever had cheese slices and olives on a fancy dinner plate, without it being a joke, and a bottle of wine.

It would make sense sure if they had nothing to eat, and someone commented on it, if they joked about it. But no one does. It’s played completely straight and it’s the most basic bitch acting school thing of making something from nothing. I know college kids be on a budget, but holy fuck nugget that is, not a no budget meal. That is a ‘its this or starve’ meal. Also shit man if she went into town to get a movie, why not pick up something to eat? You obviously don’t care that you broke into your grandparents home uninvited, you just need to take the evidence of the meal to the trash, it ain’t hard.

I have done the ‘we have nothing in the house to make a meal’ dinner plan. Where you go away for a week or two and don’t want to let things spoil in your fridge so you toss all items that can and will expire out. Only to return home, hungry, tired, and nothing open. So you have to look through your cabinets. This is when things like Kraft mac n cheese, Top Ramen, canned soup. Tuna fish, rice, anything stove and water activated can and will become a meal. Side dishes serve their purpose as a main course to fill your hunger needs.

But they are having a romantic thin pre sliced cheese and olive dinner. Good for them.

Its one of the only laughs the film afforded me so I have to find some joy in this. Otherwise my soul is just dying.

But honestly the best thing, the funniest thing that made this movie enjoyable for all of a few moments. Comes when Joe decides he is going to continue desecrating years of trust with his grandparents, and go exploring his grandfathers ‘barn’

The barn, is a place, gated off from the rest of the house. The barn also has a large padlock on it, and large KEEP OUT signs.

He grew up, being told, yelled at, and promised extreme pain. If he ever goes near the barn.

So with a smile on his face he tells Lisa he is going to finally reveal that mystery and go invade the barn. Because he doesn’t care how mad they’ll be. AND like everything else they’ve done so far that would piss off his grandparents. He is going to film it.

He walks off happy as can be to the building he was told never to investigate. He discovers there are chains, locks, and foreboding signs, red death flags all around. And he decides to start rattling the chains, and door. Because yes, he does not care. His way is barred, so he’s just a grumpy boy. “I wonder what’s inside”, he says just moments before we hear a loud sound effect WOOSH, and he backs away from the door “What the hell was that?!” We start hearing the noise of built up alien energy whirring from behind the door, so he decides he cares enough to run away.

This brings us to laugh #2

We fast forward to him walking into the house, his fiancé has the movie started, and is on the couch. She tells him it’s her favorite, sit down cuddle and shut up.

He immediately is telling her, he wants her to go with him, now in the dead of night, to break into the barn. Which she passes off as a no, why would we do that? Your grandparents would be super angry. Why don’t we just look at it tomorrow, when the sun is out. Why do you want to go creeping in there at night.

He doesn’t care.

The same man, who nearly pissed himself early in the day light at hearing an odd noise from the forbidden barn. Wants to bust open a locked door in the middle of the night.

In what realm of reality that makes sense, I cannot say. But I just find it funny the whole idea that, you would reason out. “Hey so I nearly shit myself because I heard super scary noises like something could be alive in that barn so I ran like hell. But now that its dark and all we have are weak flashlights, I think we should bust those doors open and see whats in there, because the lack of visibility will add ambience.”

No one, in their right mind, or wrong. Would consider this a wise idea.

Not just for the sake and reasoning of not unleashing a purposely locked up and sealed beast from who knows where. Or the fact you choose to do this at the dead of night, the worst possible time imaginable for this.

No. But for the sake of “As long as we don’t make a mess they’ll never know we were here.”

I may not be a carpenter. Heck I’m not even a barn caretaker. But. If I came home, and found my pristine padlocked, chained door. Busted open and the lock on the ground, the door splintered and left open. Well. I’d be inclined to assume someone broke in and contact the police.

I also would feel inclined to, if I were told by a family member I hadn’t seen in years who just showed up out of the blue, told me they stayed at my home without permission, ate my food, and broke my shit that they didn’t care. Be so inclined as to pistol whip the shit out of them and call the cops.

I HAVE SOMEONE IN MY FAMILY LIKE THAT. We all know the asshole, and the only reason no one complains about them being a little bastard of a shit turd? Is because they finally wound up in prison. Not Jail. But pound me in the ass, stab you with a toothbrush Prison. And no shits were given.

Seriously I have a LOT of stories about that family member, and they all end with “And that’s why no one talks to him”.

So Lisa, being of sound mind, and logic. After telling her fiancé how this is all entirely a bad idea. That this is committing a crime, and his grandparents, no matter how old. Will indeed beat his ass, and not be happy with him destroying their property. Is now left holding the camera following her man, as he grabs a crowbar and flashlight, leading them out to the barn.

I know they won’t survive this, and at this point I’m cheering for his death and her abduction. But I would love it. Love, love, love it. If they instead had nothing happen to them, and the film ends with Grandpa Roy coming home, finding them, and beating Joe senseless for breaking his shit and barging into his home. Like have Joe filming his Grandpa and then Gramps whacks him upset the head, camera falls to the ground and we see Joe back up to the wall in fear as Roy holds a club and just goes to town on him. THAT would be….unexpected and catch all of us. Unaware.

Hah, nailed it.

So just as Joe promised with his true I don’t care attitude. He bust the lock as loudly as he can, and throws open the door. What do we have waiting inside? A whole bunch of nothing but a super sloppy put together idea of a DIY army bunker.

These guys spent a LOT of time at Spirit Halloween buying bags of cotton cobwebs, and visiting their local surplus supply shop buying camo netting.

Question.

If you are a retired army, special forces, secret alien whatever person. And you had a space that was entirely your own, for, whatever project or alien shit you are working on, that you keep locked up away from everyone. With a door that requires pure brute strength to slide open. Would you need to use camo netting on your belongings and crates? Would you also not have kept the place clean considering your usage of the equipment inside?

Or is it, you know. Just putting netting over cardboard boxes to make it look like theres a bunch of stuff inside an otherwise completely empty barn.

If the answer is, I don’t care. We are on the same page as Joe and continue on with, well. Nothing.

Because again. Nothing happens. This isn’t a slow burn setup. I can see what they’re trying to do, but they are just. Like their acting and relationship, nothing is there.

It’s also a bit confusing. The barn looks like his grandparents have been missing for years. Which okay, that would make sense. That would make perfect sense in fact. Total state of disrepair because gram gram and pee paw were abducted. But they weren’t. The house has food, food which is still fresh, so apparently Pee paw just figured its his man cave so he’ll let the spiders take refuge?

I don’t know, and I do care.

In the end there is nothing of note, entirely. There IS, an ominous sac toward the middle of the room against the back wall. But otherwise the barn is vacant and contains a military radio which has been left on. Which thankfully Joe decides, if it was left on, it must be for a reason. Therefor I shall leave it alone.

Finally he remembers to take only memories and leave only footprints.

On top of this, logic and reasoning has returned to Lisa, and she is demanding they leave this barn and return to the safety of the house. Which Joe does not agree with. She states very clearly for the record that it is scary, its dark as shit, and there’s nothing in there so lets go back. He says his last “whatever” that he is likely to get away with before they are married, and they retreat back to the house but only after he gets her to verbally promise him. Which is odd. But he makes her promise him. That they can go back there tomorrow in the daylight. She agrees and they get the hell out of there.

I guess there is some mild excitement though. For SOME reason, when they return home, they find the signal on the tv is messed up. It’s getting static and nothing else. Hmm, interesting.

Even more interesting, the house which was void of food earlier for the grandparents long departure, has left over pizza in the fridge, they also have eggs, they have a lot of food which. For some reason, the dildo she’s marrying didn’t use for dinner. INTERESTING.

It’s not I just wanted to point out this is not very consistent.

So Joe decides he is a handyman and he will go outside, with his fiancé to attempt fixing the satellite dish and cables, so they can fix the tv.

When they go outside, still in the dead of night, Joe confronts the satellite dish. Which is setup more like a HAM satellite dish versus television satellite but, whatever. He has no idea how to fix the dish or anything, but he just wanted to waste time and film apparently, It’s like an awkward teenager trying to look for a way to be cool and seem like they know something in front of a girl they like, only to realize they have no idea what they’re doing and they shrug like “well whatever, I don’t know what to do heh”, and this man is in college. Mios Dios

Thankfully the night comes to an end, It’s hinted at that the two of them had sex last night. Nothing exciting happened I am sure, and knowing Joe, if we were to ask if Lisa reached her finish line, he wouldn’t care.

Lisa decides to, try embarrassing him, because he filmed her playing with a hula hoop the first day. So her way of embarrassing him is to, walk into the bathroom which he did not lock the door of, and film him sitting on the toilet, pants at his ankles taking a shit, while reading a playboy.

None of us needed to see this. I know it was meant to be funny, we just don’t care.

Thankfully the day has a point to it, after they eat their breakfast Joe immediately wants to go out to the barn and explore. Lisa is okay with this now. He teases her for it, but she has to explain to the man she plans to marry, that. It is much more logical, far less scary, and easier to see something in the daylight, versus fumbling around at night with a half dead flashlight. Which is also a thinly veiled metaphor for their intimacy, but Joe will never catch on, because his brain just doesn’t care.

Once more we trek out into the great wide open, into the territory of the busted open door to the barn, and what do we find?

We find that even though it is daylight. This is the darkest barn in the history of barns. You are not going to see much of anything, it’s as if the sunlight just doesn’t care. All caring stops outside of this barn apparently. Which is less of a barn and more of a storage shed. But whatever.

Only one thing of note is scene this time though. The shape under the sack in the middle of the room against the back wall is now gone. Which is semi interesting. But also Joe has decided to really amp up the beating he will receive from Grandpa Roy.

So he breaks the idea of a stealth visit by breaking the lock on the barn door, freeing whatever hellspawn from space grandpa had in there. That will upset grandpa yes but, he could likely forgive it, just like he’s forgive the starting up of his charger. One of those is easier to forgive than the other. I will hope you can sort out which for yourself.

However.

When you venture back into the barn you earlier broke into the previous night, and your first reaction is, “Babe you stay here, I gotta get a crowbar so I can see what’s inside these crates”. You…you have made a choice to absolutely bring an ass beating and possible arrest. Joe is the kind of guy, that post on 4chan telling people “Hey /bros so my neighbor in my apartment building, we are super good friends and she asked me if I could watch her place for an emergency trip out, I told her I would. I’m gonna go through her panty drawer and later I’ll search her room for her dildos”, yes there are people like that, yes they post that, and yes Joe would do that.

It’s like having someone tell you how, they are so upset at themselves and messed their life up because they accidentally slept with an ex and now they fear losing a super awesome person they’re dating, and when you go to comfort them and reassure them how to handle it, they follow it up with “Well I spent the night there and we had sex again in the morning”, it’s at that point you shift from “Okay, first time was an accident, then your ass made a choice.” For the record yes someone I knew told me this and it remains one of my many moments in life I can look back at conversations I had to hear, and questioned peoples idea of sanity.

So yeah. Joe simply does not care at this point about breaking into his grandfather shit. Because its hot in Texas and their isn’t anything to do.

I nearly laughed, but ended up shaking my head in frustration, when Lisa asked Joe for his flashlight. Because as I said in beaming bright day light this barn is still an absolute void of darkness. She asked him for his flashlight, so she can look at things, and when she brings the flashlight over? You would think she just took a match and held it out in front of herself. IT BARELY MAKES ANY DIFFERENCE!!

It makes NO difference what so ever.

We are 50 minutes in, and I just. We were on such a nice ride of 16 pretty okay and great movies.

Well Lisa the detective has uncovered a document which causes the camera to go digitally shit itself, and the document happens to say TOP SECRET at the top of it,

Now this is actually worth noting. She found a file cabinet, that was unlocked. Opened it, found a folder, and inside it was a Top Secret letter. Joe is audibly in the background, busting open locks. And she just opens a file cabinet and discovered Top. Secret. Documents.

I almost chuckled. That was not expected. But I did, I just made one of those faintly amused ‘huh’ noises in my chest. Because Lisa says the line “Hey uh, hun? This one says Top Secret, looks like its from the White House.”

It only gets better/worse, as they discover also, on his barn wall, near the filing cabinet. Is two Roswell news paper stories about the ufo crash.

People collectively lost their shit when they heard Trump kept files of classified documents in a safe in his home, and when they learned Obama and other past presidents ALSO kept documents, which they had to go through an entire procedure about how and where to store them to keep them safe.

Now we have this fucker, who keeps the truth about Roswell in his barn, in a filing cabinet without a lock.

EVEN IN DEVIL’S PASS! They had documents on the Philadelphia Experiment, out on a table. BEHIND A 3FT THICK METAL DOOR, In a BUNKER…..in the SNOW. IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE!

One of these two locations is far more secure and makes more sense than the other.

CLEARLY it’s the barn.

So the top secret document is nothing but a printed off of wiki letter from the president about Rosswell. We know this because they google it and every article they find, every document, and news paper clipping. Is printed online.

I mean at least the film did give us something, right?

It gave us Roswell in a handbag. The letter mentioned the date September 24th 1946, it also mentioned the ‘Majestic 12’, because my sister and her husband regularly attend, get drunk and go to lectures for UFO fest in Oregon, I knew what these were, and the movie briefly explains them as well for us. Which mostly come down to conspiracy theories, like the Majestic twelve or MJ-12 were a supposed group of top scientist, military and government people put together in a group to deal with the recovery of and investigation into alien spacecrafts and wrecks. Fun stuff if you ever get bored, or you know, want to watch something else.

No one would blame you.

So our Scooby Doo gang take this file and head into the house to google it as I said. Shortly after, and for some odd reason. Joe decides they need to venture back out into the barn. At night. So Lisa makes the executive decision to…change into a dress. Because women be doing that. Women. Be. Doing. That.

Once she’s changed and her man baby Joe can finally go out to the Barn again. He begins operation “Fuck your shit Grandpa” and begins popping the locks off of every container and taring the lids off with his crowbar.

Is it worth it? Not especially. Most of the shit is old military tech. HOWEVER. We finally get something to look at, and it is….I will let you decide.

They open a very ‘stinky’ container, and Joe ask Lisa to bring the camera over so they can look inside. When they do, we find, in Pee Paws musty ass spider web filled Texas Barn, a green alien corpse. With wide black eyes, biiiiig head, and small body.

It is very obviously a latex thing, folded. Into this box. Lisa screams directly into the camcorder microphone and they couple decide to run to the house. Apparently they should’ve maybe left Grandpa’s stuff alone.

The camera is going wonky, Joe can’t think, Lisa is losing her mind. It would be a very strong scary moment, if not for the fact the two are breaking this down like an actual acting class moment.

I have been with my sister, to acting lessons and this. This is straight out of a workshop.

It’s just….painful.

So the pair are in the house, arguing. Scared about what they saw. Lisa believes they need to tell people what they saw, tell someone what they found. Joe yells at her screaming they are telling no one. Not because he wants to get rich off of it. Not because Grandpa will kill him for it, and the Government will kill him for knowing what he now knows. But because “We gotta go back out there, there could be stuff implicating my grandfather, and we need to remove that stuff. He’s the only family I have and I can’t lose that”

The entire barn, my dude. Implicates your grandfather. Documents from the former president…Truman. Implicate your grandfather. This makes no sense.

This boy goes to college.

So Joe is now smoking, and telling the camera. Which seems odd now. That he is going to go back out there tomorrow. Because he wants to make sure what it was that he saw, to make sure it really WAS what he thought he saw. But Lisa finds him, she’s mad he’s smoking again because apparently he had quit. But now he see’s one alien body and he’s back to smoking, and he is giving her huge attitude. This marriage is off to a good start, and I absolutely believe we will see them on tv one day proclaiming ‘And they said it would never last’, if you got that reference, you are as old as I am.

Well Lisa ask Joe to promise her that he won’t go back out there, so, he lies telling her he won’t. The two lay in bed talking, and suddenly bright blue lights trickle from outside the window. So up goes Joe with the camera to investigate. In a film with nothing and no one caring. That is what we get. A backyard full of nothing. So, decides, for totally not setting up reasons. To sit down on the couch and aim the camera at himself, as he smokes, again. Looking really annoyed as Lisa calls out for him to come back to bed. He puts out the cig, and as he gets up from the couch, we barely make out behind him the shape of an alien watching him in the darkness.

Scary scary. So scary. Super.

Morning comes and the couple must decide they fate. So Joe has decided the best thing they can do, and the only solution now. Is they need to make a call. Joe is calling the FBI.

He is telling them he has an amazing discovery, he needs them to come and see this, they need to take care of it and just like that, without any further detail, without any idea what this discover is, what he is reporting. Nothing. The agent he speaks to says he will come down there in a few hours.

For those unfamiliar. This is not how the FBI respond to calls. There is a very formal check done, and it needs to be authorized and approved. They are not the sheriff’s office, they are not the local police. You don’t call them up and say ‘hey come check this shit out’ then do a dab.

Of course after this phone call Joe tells Lisa he needs to get back into the barn, for operation remove anything that can implicate my Pee paw.

These two are trying, so very poorly, to act. Their emotional state and acting presence looks how depression feels. They have a raised voice argument, which is quickly resolved, and he promises her not to go out there.

Which he still does. Until she catches him. So they have another fight. Which is quickly resolved.

This really is like a project on the level of Tommy Wiseau. That is not a compliment.

Thankfully someone interrupts their attempt at emotional exchange, and it’s a fat man in a white shirt and black slacks in black sunglasses. With an open holster at his side. I’m not gonna say, it, you already know from his appearance. Let’s just get this over with.

So somehow, the agent he told nothing about what they found. Knows about what they found. It is not presented in a way that suggest “Hey did…did they know what was here?”, it is simply an exchange of conversation with facts they were apparently supposed to have shared in a different draft of the script, but ended up not doing. This actor is improvising the shit out of this, and it too, is painful.

He tells the pair that he is not going to file a report, he is not going to investigate the barn, or anything. Because this is a waste of his time. He leaves without a care and Joe resorts back to being pissed off and mad at the world.

But Lisa still wants to go home so, I guess we will go home. But not before Joe goes into the Barn to have a look around, only to end up running out once he discovers the alien body is missing from the crate.

It is at this point, if you watched this, and I apologize for you sharing my pain if you did. This is the point I would highly recommend that you turn down your speakers, or remove your headphones.

The couple are now scared, and packed up their car. They are ready to go, and forget they were ever there, and Joe will face the wrath of his grandpa eventually. However wants the car is loaded up, Joe discovers he has misplaced his keys. Which he left in the barn of all places. Apparently.

So off goes Joe once more into the barn of despair. Leaving Lisa in the car. But she wont stay in the car. Because her man is taking forever. So she wonders off after Joe. Does she find him? No. Instead she finds a man hunched over in a gray alien outfit crip walking through the yard. She screams once more right into the microphone of the camera, immediately killing off our hearing, and takes off to find her future husband. Who somehow is still alive. He also is unsure why his wife is screaming bloody murder.

I like this scene.

Only because for once in the entirety of this movie, and during all of Joe’s bullshit, Lisa finally says the words Joe, just shut the fuck up.

It’s a beautiful moment.

But this movie has to end, please god let this movie end.

So Lisa shows Joe, and we see another bowlegged Texas alien, which reminds me of a horrible joke, Why are their so many bowlegged women in Texas? Because the men wear their hats to dinner.

A redneck told me that, in High School.

If that joke made you feel more than this movie has in the entire hour and 10 minutes we’ve spent here? Your welcome.

So the couple watch this awkward alien for a bit until of course one sneaks up behind them. They both end up knocked to the ground and we get our final pay off moment of the film. The big shot that this was built around and we al waited for.

As the camera drops and the two are tosses to the ground. Bright blinding large lights turn on and from this wall of blinding light runs out a bowlegged alien. Who quickly grabs Lisa’s leg and drags her off quickly toward the lights, and soon after, the lights turn off. We see a triangle of lights flash and hear a jet engine. Moments before the ship vanishes and we hear Joe crawling around shout for Lisa. He has blood on the side of his face, and he decides to run for his grandparents vintage car for escape. Even though the car has ‘the club’ auto theft device on it and he knew this earlier. He still felt somehow he could drive it even with that on it. This boy goes to college.

Someone approved his acceptance to a college.

Well the car of course won’t work and Joe thinks he’s saved. Because he sees car lights headed his way. Obviously it must be His grandparents. So he runs out to meet them, immediately spilling his guts on what happened. Only to discover of course the driver and passenger are none other than two fbi agents, who destroy his camera as Joe is taken off kicking and screaming and hopefully getting a cavity search so deep they’ll be brushing the back of his teeth for him.

The end.

I don’t care.

The End

Normally. I say normally because, I’ve lived a life if watching the worst and most boring things ever so or me normal applies. But normally. If I watch a shit movie, it energizes me to begin putting to word why I hated it, why it failed. And I can admittedly go off a lot. A lot.

I just don’t really want to. This sounded like it had so much promise. It really did. It was just poorly done.

It would be easier to hate this film if it was lazy, or failed in its execution. But it was just bad.

There is a movie in there, there is a story you can tell. You can tell it better and much more effectively however, if the people involved were better fit for it.

For example. The Room and The Disaster Artist.

The Disaster artist nearly scene for scene recreated parts of the film The Room, and made it into a comedy, it was successful in what it did. Even for people who hadn’t seen the source behind it, they’d understand it through the scene. In the film The Room though, those scenes play out differently. Those scenes are just bad. Badly done, badly scripted, and an actual mess.

Actually that’s not entirely fair. But my brain is dying.

I really wanted to like this movie but. I couldn’t. I also couldn’t hate it. I just don’t care. Which feels somehow worse.

But it all comes down to a lack of everything.

There is a story there, a good one. You could see how this might be one. You can tell what they were after. It was just done by people lacking the talent and skills to do it.

The way scenes played out, and their dialog. It felt like a mix of bad improvisation and scripted lines. This couple had no chemistry between them. Very little is given about them, just a vague chalk line of details which change depending on what’s needed. They really do not know how to act and again I don’t mean that insultingly. I just mean it honestly. You can see they are trying to do basic acting exercises with one another, they just aren’t playing off each other well, at all.

Me and my sister when we were young. She wanted to be an actress. So my mom paid for us both to go to an acting class. With adults. We were the only kids. It was awkward as hell. I also did not want to be an actor, but as siblings, our parents put us together for everything. Everyone was told to act out the same scene, They gave us a binder of paper, told me to throw it down and say “This is what I think of so and so’s assignment!”

I was a kid, it was awkward and I mumbled most of it out. My sister did the same and we never went back. Years later watching Tommy Wiseau’s The Neighbors show. We saw similar acting exercises. Only this was filmed and released on the world. Everyone in that show, did not know how to act. They tried, and failed, and it should serve to any one acting or trying to become an actor. As what not to do.

Any scene where these two have to express emotion, give motive, and react off one another. They just can’t, and it’s so sadly obvious.

The quickness in their scenes, how they progress through the stages of emotion each scene is just, bad.

Whenever the couple had an argument, they all started the same. She would plead with him, and he would blow her off. She would get upset, and he’d escalate to angry. She would get angry and he’d go to raging. She goes to crying and he goes to calming. Then they are resolved. There is no smooth transition during either of these stages. I am sure they felt like they were acting well. Maybe they had friends nearby who were encouraging them. I doubt it, but maybe.

There’s just nothing there.

The setups to each scare setup in the movie is as basic as it gets. It doesn’t take a lot to copy another films scares, or pull off a similar scare as something from say Blair Witch. Which is a good example a lot of these films pull from in the whole less is more. Let their imagination fill in the blanks.

Only they didn’t do less is more. They showed just a bit too much in scenes they should’ve shown less, and in scenes they showed less they should’ve shown more.

The alien body inside the box. If they just glimpsed the camera inside for less than a quarter of a second, just a quick up down glance and scream? It would’ve worked and looked less like a mask. But they lingered on it long enough it felt like too long and you made out far too much detail.

In the Blair Witch, there’s a scene where a character discovers what appears to be a severed bloody…thing. It’s so fast, and so hard to make out. It could be a tongue, it could be an organ. You just don’t know. Could be human, could be animal. We just didn’t get a solid look. ON PURPOSE!

But it was effective, it made you want to SEE the thing they freaked them out. But we couldn’t. It was over as quickly as it began, but it had out interest and we felt something. Those people worked well off of each other and they had someone to help them along. While letting things just happen. These people just didn’t know how to do the same in a way that worked.

In a film with this run time. You need things to happen. You need a good, steady build up. They attempted that, and it wasn’t weighed out well.

In the beginning, we had the setup of his grandfather having worked in the military doing who knows what. They establish that, they show us how that whole area works and we get it. They arrive and no one is there. They’re gone for the weekend. You see their story a bit, with why Joe wanted the surprise weekend, the hope of sharing the proposal with his only family. From there we go to Joe breaking through roadlbocks setup when he was a kid. Starting with the classic muscle car he wasn’t allowed near. And then the Barn. It was an escalation of events with the Barn meant to be the big hurdle of mystery for him.

So they get to the barn, we see more of the grandfathers story spill out and the realization that he was into some really heavy stuff that is not only dangerous, but world changing. So the story shifts from Joe and his having fun and breaking down walls of his youth growing up there, to now being concerned for his family. That concern leads him to make some bad decisions and ultimately the thing that should have been left alone, that he didn’t. Ends up taking something from him, and then he himself ends up cloaked in a coverup, vanishing from the world and his grandparents lives.

That outline has a good story within it. If you told this to someone who was into found footage films, who loves alien movies. They’d dig this. They could tell this sounds interesting. And it really would be.

It’s just done badly. All of it failed and couldn’t carry itself.

Jump scares love them or hate them, they are a part of horror movies. You can have a crap story and good jump scares. But again, this one did not. All of its scares were staged and presented in a very clear cut way, you could see these things coming and even when the movie adds spooky music, which ruins the whole “We present this unedited” bullshit. It just fails to be scary.

Having scary music does nothing for a scare. Having a woman scream into a microphone to the point it blows out everyones ears, doesn’t make a thing scary.

Had it been done by someone with a bit more experience, a vision, and a dream. Absolutely they’d nail this. A studio would get this and over do a LOT of it, but they’d know how its supposed to work and deliver it. These people just didn’t know how to properly do so and it’s sad.

Imagine if this had been good.

I hate doing this in reviews, and its bad form, but there are a lot of things that could’ve improved this, I just don’t want to write out a whole new film. I can give a few examples sure. But it all again comes back to the execution.

Like the barn. The barn is the thing all of this films major moments are built around.

It was an overly dark long abandoned place with little to nothing inside it, and what was there was not impressive.

There’s a lot they setup here but never gave mention to or made you think about. Like the fact this area around the barn, which is fenced off? It has been left to grow wild. Everything else is well taken care of and maintained. Everything around that barn gives you the sense and feel of a perimeter. The closest they give us about that, is when Joe gets close to the place and hears the radio noise inside and an alien worble noise.

Imagine if they stretched that set out. It’s established that Lisa is scared of snakes. So film her screaming about a snake in the yard and have Joe chase it off, then as the snake gets close to the barn, it either completely avoids that area all together, OR it races toward that tall grass, and dies.

What if they had a scene of all of a sudden, dozens of snakes are fleeing the area around the barn, squirrels too, Everything. Maybe show that everything around the barn is dead, or somehow different. Just give a sense that this is an area, you absolutely want to avoid.

Once inside, maybe setup a journal from the grandfather, notes even. Show us what he would do in there. They had a radio going, constantly. But no explanation. If you had a journal, notes SOMETHING you could say that, the radio us kept running as they found the signal interferes somehow with some inner signal coming from the bodies, or perhaps that signal is what they discovered kept the bodies in a coma like state. Read from this journal, from his notes about how maybe he was watching the bodies and doing studies on them, on the hardware in the barn. Maybe Grandpa stumbled onto something that accidentally could reanimate the bodies, or signal their ship. That could be why the signal from the radio is needed so that it keeps the ship from finding their dead space friends.

So when Joe flips it off and on, suddenly it alerts other aliens and they immediately zoom on over to that farm. Giving them a spot to get back the bodies of their dead, and their equipment, unfortunately giving them also Joe and Lisa as ones to old responsible, or just new people for probing.  Have them be chased around the house by aliens that we barely get to glimpse, instead of filming your best friend in a gray suit walking like a monkey.

Have something in the folder they took from the barn. GIVE us details. Something to hold onto, something that could possibly explain things.

Give us a reason, why grandpa apparently stopped visiting the barn. The barn as they present it, is shown to be long abandoned. Did he just decide ‘Well I’m retired now so, fuck the alien shit in my barn, time for doritos and Maury.

If you add in some story elements. Tell us he was freaked out…god how about this.

The note on the door about the grandparents leaving? Maybe have Joe and Lisa discover that…that note was from a month or two ago, maybe three months ago.

Joe and Lisa discover all the food in the house is bad. Rotten fruit, rotted meat, milk expired, eggs are bad. Have them realize the couple somehow never came back home from their trip it seems. Give the idea, that maybe they came home, grandpa went to the barn to check on things and something got loose, something got out. And they ended up abducted, or shit have the men in black end up being why they went missing.

Then you have a better pay off to the discovery of things in the barn, you have a reason it looks abandoned, why the house has no food, and. Something they even setup in the film but didn’t bother using. When Joe calls the FBI. He tells them he is Roy. The owner of the house on the phone. Lisa points this out and he tells her he lied because he was afraid how they’d react to him not being the owner. This is why Joe made up the story of them house sitting for his grandparents.

If the feds took out his grandparents, If the feds cleaned up what happened there. It would be an interesting twist for them to react, to hearing someone at that house CLAIM to be Roy, and would give them a reason for rolling out to the house. Have them interrogate the couple. Build tension between them and freak them out.

All of these things, are somewhat set up in the film, like you can see the ground work for those possibilities. You could build off of those and use them for your story. But they just…didn’t.

Instead we get Joe going from wanting to enjoy being home again, to being an asshole breaking everything without a care. If he really loved these people who he saw as his parents because his own died. Would he really have decided to grab a crowbar and bust the lock on the barn? No. Everything he did was a constant door opening and closing on itself.

He tells Lisa they can stay there and it’ll be fine as long as they don’t make a mess or change anything.

Immediately they’re breaking into their wine, they’re screwing with their car and tv.

He tells Lisa he wants to go look at the barn, she tells him that’s not a good idea, He still does it and tries pulling the chain off the door before realizing its locked. So seeing it locked? He grabs a crowbar and breaks in.

He finds sensitive documents implicating the possibility of UFO shit being in the barn, he tells Lisa to remember where they got the folder from the file cabinet, what was on top of it, so they can put it back and no one will realize they were in there.

He says this. Then immediately gets his crowbar and begins breaking open every metal crate in the barn.

It’s so badly inconsistent. He comes off as an asshole instead of a concerned son.

Break things in a house you don’t want people to know you stayed in

Break more things because of curiosity but tell us you want to keep it looking like you weren’t there.

Call the feds to come investigate, but collect anything with your grandfathers name on it to protect him. Even though all of that was given to him and in his name.

Tell your fiancé you love her, then look at her like you despise her.

Rage at your fiancé for being concerned about you, then embrace her because you love her so much.

Swear to the love of your life you will get them out of there and keep her safe, then immediately bitch at them when they find you doing the opposite.

If those things happened. Over several days, were given time to be fleshed out and breath. They would have weight and meaning. Instead they don’t.

They are just poorly done scenes, with bad acting. Yelling isn’t acting or emotion.It’s telling. Screaming and being filled with fear are different things. Saying these people are the most important people in your life that you love and respect deeply. But then day “I don’t care” when you begin breaking their shit.

Establishing it’s been ages since they’ve seen or heard from you, and immediately doing the most damage you can to their property. It just doesn’t make sense. I know a script needs to happen. A movie needs to happen. But this is not how you do that.

At times it made the movie feel so uneven. Like they really did change ideas midway through filming, or just forgot what they were doing.

Like the FBI agent knowing there’s an alien body in the barn. Joe could’ve reacted shocked and said “How did you know?” But he didn’t. It’s not even played off that way. It would’ve made things creepy if the agent told them he was aware, then they’d really feel like they don’t know who to trust. They’d realize they were in trouble.

But no. It’s just accepted that he told him everything that was in there, and we just go from there.

Did he tell him and we just couldn’t hear it over the phone? Did we miss it in a moment of our brain shutting down because it didn’t care?

Hell if I know.

But honestly the big bother here is all of his interactions with his fiancé, all of the events that happen in the barn. It’s just so lackluster, and the way his mind shifts gears so lethally from one direction to another. It’s so jarring that it makes no sense and you have to wonder why he did this, how he came to this conclusion on so many things. Then you sadly realise “Well yeah, the script told him” That’s not a good thing.

I had high hopes and they were quickly dashed. The movie was boring during its. Well majority of run time. Seriously 45 minutes in, on a film that’s around 82 minutes. Where nothing substantial has happened and your bored…that’s just not good.

There’s no cast to look at the work they did, because they wanted this to feel real. Same with the director and producer. Which is maybe for the better. Is this the worst telling of this type of story? No. There are worse with actual budgets, one coming to mind is Extraterrestrial with Michael Ironside as a pot farmer.

The one constant joe I got from this film, Was from Joe and his line of I don’t care. Because it immediately brought up one of my favorite episodes and memories from Mystery Science Theater 3000 season 3 episode 6, Time of the Apes. There’s a scene with a little boy named Jonny, his parents are sending him and a friend off and an earthquake shakes through their home so the family tell “A tremor, Jonny, don’t go, it’s dangerous”, the boy smiles and says, “I don’t care!, Come on Caroline lets go.”

It's the funniest damn thing and I still laugh thinking about it. So this movie gave me that at least. Which again is not a good thing when your main actor reminds you of a little boy telling his parents he doesn’t care when they show honest concern for his well being.

This was hard to get through and we did it. We managed. It took a lot longer to finish because I had to stop a few times and walk around, wake myself up and get back to it. I said the wave of great films was going too smoothly to be that good for so long. I just would’ve enjoyed it if the film were bad in a terrible lets growl at it way. Not just a…uhg. Let’s go off to bed yeah? Yeah.

Until tomorrow, if your loved one tells you they don’t care when you express concern about them breaking and entering. Call the police and learn to love yourself before loving someone else.