REC (2007)

I keep saying that I’m not a fan of found footage but then turn around and review found footage movies that I end up liking. Now this one is a movie that I know I enjoyed when it first came out, but I hadn’t reviewed so I thought I’d give it a rewatch and talk about it here. Does the movie hold up? Do I still like it? Might as well find out.

The story has us following a reporter and her cameraman as they shadow a group of firefighters. The movie starts off with some interviews as they capture what an average night at the station is like. Then a call comes in and they rush off to an apartment building in the city. When they arrive they are greeted by police and the tenants. They were called because an elderly woman living on an upper floor was screaming and making an awful racket. They bust in and there is clearly something wrong with her. She attacks and critically injures one of the patrolmen. When they try to rush him out of the building for help they find all of the doors locked and guarded by armed me.

The rest of the movie are the ever shrinking group of survivors at first trying to find a way out around the quarantine and then trying to survive the infected. It seems that the old woman had some sort of virus that made her violent and anyone she bit also becomes violent. This passes from person to person until there are less uninfected folks than there are infected. That is what the authorities were trying to prevent. This is all explained and there is also a bit of a supernatural connection that I won’t spoil here. But this is basically an outbreak flick.

This is a decently paced movie that comes in at a rather tight seventy minutes. It wastes no time getting to the good stuff as our characters get the call after maybe seven or eight minutes of setup. Once they arrive at the building, we get some rather creepy stuff as they break into the apartment, get attacked, and then realize they can’t leave. It slows a bit while our reporter interviews folks which serves to introduce some of the other characters before picking up with another batch of violence that carries thru until the end. Even on a rewatch I found myself sucked in and never bored, which shows how well constructed and paced REC is. This is doubly impressive as this is a story that most genre fans, including myself, have seen repeatedly.

We get a few decent gags like a gnarly neck bite/wound, a shocking landing from height onto a tile floor, a snapped neck, and my personal favorite an up close injection into a face that while not gory did have me squirming in my seat. There are also plenty of spooky moments as well as a couple good jump scares. There is a sequence at the end in the attic which was super effective and creepy. And this movie has a memorable ending that was played in the trailer and became the poster child for horror during the first decade of this century with the woman being dragged away from the camera.

There is some of the shaky camera footage that I detest, but it is brief and relegated to the action sequences only. This means the audience gets to take a breath with the characters but also wait for the next horrible thing to occur. It works nicely and is an approach that I wish more movies like this would consider. I don’t need to spend an hour getting motion sickness and not being able to see what is happening. But I’m getting off topic. REC is a great example of a found footage movie done right and is worth a look. I need to go back and check out the sequels which I also remember liking. I also should mention that the US remake Quarantine was also a decent watch. Though I’d recommend this over that one.

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

Amityville Prison (aka. Against the Night) (2017)

The movie starts off with an interrogation of a woman by what I think must be a police officer or maybe a Fed. She is covered in blood, and he tells her that he is sorry about what happened to her friends. So that is probably a bad thing. He asks her to tell him again what happened and that is where the main plot of the movie kicks off.

Our lead is with a group of friends hanging out and bullshitting about stuff. They hear their friends upstairs having sex and filmmaker Hank decides to sneak up and film them going at it like bunnies. Well, I guess that is something that friends do now… Eventually they start to talk about his career and as a result Hank offers them money to go to the local haunted prison, Holmesburg, to shoot his next big reality show. They agree and off they go. Eventually they get trapped in the abandoned buildings and are picked off one at a time until it is just our final girl and the police who show up. Which is why she is sitting in a room being interrogated.

So that is the end, right? Well not really. In an interesting twist it seems that the kids stumbled onto a hidden meth lab and the gas mask wearing killer was one of the guys running the illegal operation. This is despite Hank going on about how the prison is laid out like a crop circle and spewing nonsense about aliens. Though we see that all the guys working the lab are dead and when shots ring out sure enough a damn alien walks thru the door! Roll credits.

I want to give them credit for an interesting plot. I loved the whole misdirection when I thought it was going to be a bunch of drug dealers and not anything supernatural. That was a neat twist and very creative. But then they ruin that with the stupid reveal of the alien at the very end. Why was that necessary? Spoilers… it wasn’t. That twist added onto a twist left a bad taste in my mouth. I was already on the fence with Amityville Prison due to the at times terrible pacing and found footage shaky camera style, so this just pushed me into the negative review territory.

I guess I should also mention something else. As you may or may not know there are a ton of Amityville movies being made. That is because the name is that of a town so pretty much anyone can make a movie with Amityville in the title. But this goes even further than that because it was shot as Against the Night and is set in Philadelphia. Not once in the movie does anyone reference Amityville nor does the plot make any connection to it. Again, it also switches from a drug dealer to an alien monster movie never venturing into a ghost storyline at all. So far this is the most egregious attempt at slapping the name on a movie to garner interest and get distribution.

Is this a terrible movie? Again, the plot twist ruined it for me, and I had other issues with Amityville Prison. In the end though I have to admit that I’ve watched much worse. While I still can’t recommend Amityville Prison if you must watch one of these low budget entries then this one is okay, I suppose. Still there are much better things to check out.

 

© Copyright 2022 John Shatzer

Amityville No Escape (2016)

I have hope for this movie. Sure, it is another found footage entry into the franchise but this one is directed by Henrique Couto, He is one of my favorite independent filmmakers working today so there is a chance that this could be good. Might as well dive in and see. 

The movie has two main plot lines connected in a clever way. You have footage that a documentary crew has gotten possession of dealing with a woman who moves into a haunted house while her husband is deployed. There are some things that go bump in the night, but she doesn’t freak out. Instead, she does research about the history of the place and starts to feel better about things. Though in typical fashion not running for the hills at the first indication of haunting turns out very poorly for her. 

The other story follows the crew of friends who are heading to the house to not so much investigate the supernatural goings on but instead the ringleader is doing a study on fear. This is why he keeps showing them the footage to set things up to I guess scare the hell out of them. He has a friend, his sister, a hippie girl, and a cameraman come along for the fun. There are some creepy bits with a disappearing girl in the woods, a gun wielding local who yells that they are in danger, and other spooky things in the dark. Their story ramps up until they go into the house (they had been camping nearby) where it all reaches a disturbing conclusion that ties both stories together in an inexplicable but sort of neat way. 

This is certainly one of the better ones so far. The cast is decent and is given an actual story to work with. I liked the fact that there are a couple of plot lines that jump back and forth. This allows the movie to avoid getting boring as they can quickly shift from spooky to mundane and back. To enjoy a paranormal movie like this I’ve always felt that you need to have a safety valve to give the audience a chance to take a breath. Mostly because it is nearly impossible to sustain a high level of suspense for too long without it feeling forced. 

The cast is decent

There are several jump scares that work as well as a lot of creepy atmosphere to set the tone. I was interested in what was on the screen from start to finish. This reminds me that I wanted to mention that the editing here is perfect. The movie clocks in at seventy-eight minutes without a single wasted or bloated scene. Overly long scenes or unnecessary dialogue/characters has been one of my biggest complaints with a lot of these Amityville movies and here director Couto avoids all of that. Not surprising since as I’ve already mentioned he is one of the best directors working in the low budget scene today.  

Is Amityville No Escape a perfect movie? Not at all. There are some corners cut due to the low budget and some of the gags don’t work as well as they could. But the important thing is that I got believable characters in a story that never bored me. This is another solid movie that I can recommend, though this time without qualifications (See my review for The Amityville Terror for explanation). Two decent entries in a row. Could this mean they get better from here on out? Spoilers… hell no!

© Copyright 2022 John Shatzer

The Amityville Haunting (2011)

Damn it! I suppose it was a matter of time before someone thought it would be a good idea to make an Amityville flick that was also a found footage movie. As you may already know if you have been hanging out at Crappy Movie Reviews, I’m not a fan of found footage. I’ll give them props when they are done right, but in my experience that isn’t very often. Well let’s see what we have here.

The story starts off with some kids sneaking into “the house” which looks nothing like the Amityville house at all. They get up to some sexy shenanigans and then something bad happens. What is that? Who knows we just see them yanked away from their phones… because you know everyone films themselves having sex when trespassing? Next up we see a family looking to buy the house. Even after the real estate agent drops dead in the driveway they still fall in love with the place. I suppose that explains why they don’t leave when the doors keep opening by themselves, the daughter’s boyfriend ends up as a pasty pile of dried blood in the backyard, and of course they find the phone with footage of the kids from earlier. Yep, no reason to leave the house… none at all. There terrible decisions lead to the predictable bad ending.

Not to sound like a broken record but I dislike found footage movies for a couple of reasons. First it is used as an excuse to not have a proper story with a beginning, middle, and end. The excuse of “its supposed to be real” is always tossed up as the reason filmmakers making these don’t have a plot with characters. Here this is on display with a family of unlikeable characters doing insanely stupid things that make no sense. This is only made worse when they use the most annoying character, the preteen son with the camera, as our narrator. When I say narrator, he does these odd confessional style monologues to try and fill in the plot between random bits of footage. When they do try and string together some sort of cohesive narrative, they screw it up. For example, we are told that they can’t afford to move, which is why they have to stay. Only to see the father install what has to be a very expensive security system to record what is happening in the house. Sure, that makes sense.  

Lets watch the characters watch the movie

The second issue here is that again the filmmakers lean into the found footage genre to cover up the fact that they clearly had no idea how to shoot a movie. The audio is awful, and it is hard to hear the dialogue at times. Also, like many found footage flicks the camerawork is enough to make you motion sick as the camera never sits still long enough to see what is going on. Sort of hard to make a scary movie when I can’t even see what is supposed to be spooky. This is also used to cover up the lack of budget and any special kills or effects. This is just lazy filmmaking.

This is the worst of these movies so far. I’m beginning to question the wisdom of this marathon. Hopefully they get better, but I hear things… bad things. Until next time heed my advice and don’t spend your valuable time watching The Amityville Haunting.

 

© Copyright 2022 John Shatzer

Pizza Girl Massacre (2014)

I’m always looking for something new to cover here on my annual Slasher movie marathon. With a name like Pizza Girl Massacre, I couldn’t resist. I mean how bad could it be really? No honestly… oh crap.

This found footage flick… God Damn it… follows a group of documentary filmmakers as they go into the woods and shoot footage of a local theater troupe rehearsing Shakespeare. But first we get to watch the auditions, some infighting, and even the director of the documentary getting shot down by all the actresses. Eventually they get to the cabin, which has a huge basement under it that is explained away as a bomb shelter. Though obviously they shot this in a dorm or some other large building. 

They meet the creepy landlady and her son, who she refers to as an idiot. The cast and crew parties and the director of documentary tries to score some points by ordering pizza for everyone. This doesn’t end well, and he takes his frustration out on the delivery girl by not paying her and then by losing his mind and getting really drunk. The next morning people start to die as they soon figure out that the pizza girl is pissed and killing them. People die, jokes are told, and not surprisingly the idiot son and mom are involved.

I’ll start off with some positives. I thought that the cast did a good job and were very good for a low budget production. This is especially true when doing the comedy that is sprinkled throughout the entire movie. There are some especially funny gags like Harrison not being totally dead yet and the hot dog man. Without decent actors this would have been a complete failure so having people with some timing was much appreciated.

The gore was also surprisingly good. Now understand this is a low budget movie so it has to be judged differently. But there are a lot of deaths and while a lot of them are after the fact there is quite a bit of fun to be had. Throats are cut, people suffocated with plastic bags, an eye gets gouged, someone dies to a rolling pin down their throat, and there is a head rolling. The best is the guy getting cut in half and the sketchy director getting his head cut off slowly with a hacksaw. That last one is by far my favorite. So again, they did some good things with the kills and gore like every good horror/slasher movie should do. Now we get to the bad.

The camerawork killed this for me. I get that it is being shot as a found footage movie but it really isn’t a found footage so you can make some effort to clean it up a bit. First issue is that they had autofocus on the cameras they were using. That means the damn thing went out of focus every time someone moved or entered/left the frame. What that means is most of the movie was out of focus and blurry as hell. Not only couldn’t I see what was going on but it gave me a splitting headache as I watched. They then double down on this by adding fake static and digital defects to the shots. I guess they were trying to imply that the gear was damaged or something. All it does is make a difficult watch even worse.

I wanted to like Pizza Girl Massacre. The cast is solid, and I thought the writing was good. But I just can’t recommend that anyone sit thru and deal with how poorly it was shot. Should the filmmakers being paying attention to me (hey it could happen!) if that was intended, you need to do better and understand that your movie needs to be watchable. If it was because you just had bad equipment, then by new cameras and make another movie because you clearly have talent and I want to see what you do next. This is one of those rare times where I can’t recommend a movie but am still very excited to see what else they have made.

 

© Copyright 2022 John Shatzer 

Camp Cold Brook (2018)

Every few months I like to scroll thru the offerings of the various streaming services I have access to looking for a horror movie that I’ve not seen or heard about before. Sometimes I strike gold and sometimes I’m miserable. Camp Cold Brook is neither of those.

Jack runs a paranormal “reality” show called Haunt Squad. The fun starts off with the show getting cancelled by a network executive, played by Courtney Gains in a very brief appearance. Jack promises something big and manages to get one more ninety-minute special out of the network. Later we see him with his production crew trying to figure out where they should go. Yeah, he didn’t have anything planned. After an assistant brings up the massacre at Camp Cold Brook, they decide that is the ticket and head off. But not before we get some family time with Jack and his girls before the travel montage and generic nineties style rock music.

The locals in the small town try to warn them off, but a few bucks tossed at the sheriff has them being dropped off at the remote campground. They wander around a bit, have a campfire, some spooky stuff goes on, and they keep splitting up. Late in the movie we get another character, Jack’s mom, who calls and finds out where he is. Seems that Jack was one of a pair of survivors from the original massacre and there is some weird connection going on. Also we get a witch and some kid ghosts that are trapped because of a magic circle which they try to use tape to cover up. It all wraps up with an ending that I saw coming a mile away.

This is one of those movies where the scriptwriter has seen a bunch of movies and jams all the "cool stuff" into his story. We get ghosts, a witch, a team of ghost hunters, some found footage scenes, and a bit mystery/twist. Now as a fan of slasher movies, which are very formulaic, I don’t expect everything that I watch to be unique and different. As long as it is executed well, I’m good with turning off my brain and having some fun. The problem with Camp Cold Creek is that the movie is very slow and tedious. The pacing suffers from the first half hour being taken up with a staff meeting and meeting Jack’s family. I suppose the fact that he has two daughters and loves them was supposed to be the big payoff at the end. But in reality, the movie spends way too long here. It feels less like plot setup and more like padding.

We also get a travel montage, a setup montage, and what feels a bit like an improvised scene of them sitting around a campfire shooting the breeze before anything spooky happens. When we do get to the ghosts it is underwhelming. The shadows in the background and occasional face behind the glass just doesn’t do it for me. I’ve seen this done before and much better. The music doesn’t help as it tends to just run in the background without being used to set the scene or build tension. Overall Camp Cold Creek was tedious and a chore to get thru. Once we get to the end the big twist is that Jack was at the camp as a kid and didn’t remember he escaped. Nor does he remember that the girl he hired who suggested the location was his camp girlfriend. Why doesn’t he remember? Never explained. Why does his mom never tell her son with a ghost hunting show never to go to Camp Cold Creek? Again nothing? Why does his daughter’s imaginary dream ghost show up who is also the witch show up to babysit his kids and nobody says anything?

Are you beginning to get it yet? This is a very poorly written movie with lots of plot holes. It gets annoying after a while and since I wasn’t terribly interested in the story I then began to notice things like daylight shining thru windows when it is supposed to be night. Or how the camp that has been abandoned for almost thirty years has nicely mowed grass. Don’t even get me started on the generator that is supposed to run after sitting idle and that they expect to use the almost thirty-year-old gas. My damn mower won’t start after sitting over the winter, and while it is admittedly a pretty shitty mower that is asking for a lot of leeway from the audience.

I will say that the cast is solid. Chad Michael Murray and Danielle Harris do the best they can with the material. Sadly, there isn’t much they can do, but I appreciate that they don’t phone it in, despite how bad the script is. The movie is at it’s best when they are on screen. That is the only positive that I can say about Camp Cold Brook. I could give you more negatives but that seems to be overkill. This is a bad movie, and I can’t recommend that you spend any of your time on it.

 

© Copyright 2022 John Shatzer

Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum (2018)

Let me begin things off with letting you all know that I’m not normally a huge found footage movie fan. Though I’ve been blown away by a couple in the past like As Above So Below, and The Bay. When they are done well, they are fun, when they aren’t it gets boring… very boring. But I have heard folks talking about this one for a couple of years now and thought I’d give it a chance. 

This South Korean movie kicks off with some kids messing around in a supposedly haunted asylum. They apparently were live streaming because they disappeared and now a new online ghost hunting team is going to investigate the place. Though they aren’t supposed to be there and will have to sneak in. They meet up, horse around, walk thru the woods, go into the asylum, and run around screaming a lot. Along the way we find out that the internet crew is faking stuff to freak out their guests, they bring independent investigators along you see, until they aren’t faking it. The place really is haunted, and they have pissed it off! Unfortunately, the “Captain” of the program is so obsessed with clicks that it is far too late by the time they try to escape. 

If you are a fan of found footage movies you may dig Gonjiam. It checks all the boxes including running and screaming, nausea inducing camera work, and lots of padding. People seen to enjoy this, but I don’t. The story here is paper thin and consists of people being assholes for money. That is why they go into the asylum and why they mess with the people they brought along as guests. We get lots of padding where they are eating supper, playing around in a car, teasing each other, and walking in the woods. This eats up about twenty minutes and is painful to get thru. I found it tedious. 

Now when they get to the place it does get creepy in spots. There are gags with arms getting yanked in boxes, scarves with a mind of their own, noises, a creepy doll, and lots of shadowy stuff happening in the background where the characters can’t see it. There are points in the movie where it is sort of scary and I can see why fans of this movie dig it so much. But in addition to how slow it was to start they keep going back to the well with these same types of scares which gets repetitive. The stuff doesn’t work the second or third time you try it. You have to give me something new to sink my teeth into if you want to keep my attention. Then again this just might be my innate dislike for the found footage genre speaking. 

If you like this movie then I totally get it and won’t argue with you. Personally, if you are going to make a found footage movie you need to give me a real story that keeps me guessing. You know like any movie should have. Just saying. This is why I have said and will continue to say that this kind of flick enables lazy filmmaking cloaking itself in the “I want to make it feel real” spiel. Real life is mostly boring guys so give us something fun to watch. This was not it and I’m going to recommend everyone pass on Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum. 

© Copyright 2021 John Shatzer

The Jungle (2013)

If you have read my reviews here at the site, you know that I have a weird relationship with found footage movies. I keep saying that as a rule I hate them, but yet I keep reviewing them. And if that weren’t confusing enough, I’ve had some decent luck of late. I rather liked As Above So Below and The Bay was a decent movie so there are some positive reviews. But I kept pressing my luck and sure enough I found a movie that reinforced my dislike for the subgenre of found footage.

The Jungle is about a guy named Larry who is determined to prove the existence of Leopards in the jungles of Indonesia so that the government will work harder to protect their habitat. We get to see him show off the gear he is going to use while having it setup in his backyard. This consists of him talking to his cameraman. We also get to briefly meet his wife, who looks concerned about the trip. No foreboding there am I right?

The pair travel to Indonesia and meet up with Adi and Budi, the locals who are going to help them track the leopards. They also meet a lady who warns them that there is bad mojo where they are going. That won’t be important later or will it? We then are treated to the four characters wandering around the jungle bickering about turning back. The tracker keeps wanting to bail and despite theoretically being in charge keeps being convinced to continue. I mean the guy knows something bad is going on and yet he keeps going. That doesn’t make much sense to me.

And we are walking...

We get more wandering around and arguing before they find a dead Jaguar. Something killed an apex predator and instead of “hey let’s leave” Larry is like “we need to keep going”. Just to be clear they all agree that it wasn’t a man who killed the leopard and leopards are supposed to be at the top of the food chain. After convincing the tracker to keep going, because again he clearly knows it is dangerous, they find some cat poop and a partially eaten human hand. That finally sends them scurrying out of the jungle, but it is too late. Sure enough the big bad creature has finally noticed them and is in the mood for some people for supper.

See the creature? Hope so this is as good as we get.

The Jungle is a prime example of the sort of lazy filmmaking that so many of these found footage flicks represent. Instead of making any effort to have good dialogue or interesting characters with actual story arcs they lean into the “realism” of people walking around the jungle. That doesn’t make for a good movie. That doesn’t even make for a good episode of that silly television show Monster Quest. At least there they have confessional style interviews to break up the monotony of people talking and walking. Here we simply get eighty-four minutes of nonsense with one single bit of excitement a few seconds before the end credits roll.

There are a couple of times where the movie could have given us a good jump scare, but they keep pulling back from it. When they do finally toss one at the audience, I was so bored I didn’t care. The only time the movie got close to being creepy was when you see a pair of arms hugging a tree as something was slowly crawling down it. That was decent, but it is followed up with nothing.

I was very disappointed with The Jungle. The director, Andrew Traucki, is responsible for a great Crocodile flick called Black Water and did the shark movie The Reef. I had expected more from him as I enjoyed both of those. Sadly, this movie is a complete waste of time and I recommend staying far away from it. Do not watch The Jungle!

 

© Copyright 2021 John Shatzer

As Above, So Below (2014)

This is a movie that was recommended to me repeatedly and I kept avoiding it. I thought it looked like another of those found footage movies that was nothing but a series of jump scares where everyone dies at the end. I finally relented and checked it out last night. I have to say I was very surprised at what I got.

Scarlett is an urban archaeologist who is following in her father’s footsteps as she too searches for the Philosopher’s stone that had eluded him. The movie opens with her racing against an Iranian demolition team to find a clue before they bring down a cave system. This establishes her as a risk taker as well as someone who is a bit obsessed and might use questionable judgement.

The rest of the movie is set in the catacombs under Paris. The clues she found in Iran have led her to the vast tunnels filled with the former inhabitants of the city. Somewhere beneath the city is the stone, which itself is the key to unlocking all sorts of alchemical powers. Soon she has recruited a guide, an old friend, and a cameraman to join her in the dangerous labyrinth of passages. As they go deeper and deeper looking for the stone it becomes clear they are in trouble. They experience all sorts of spooky and weird stuff such as mysterious chanting, figures skulking around following them and a damn telephone that appears out of nowhere. Something is definitely not right.

This is not at all the movie that I was expecting. First up it has a real Indiana Jones vibe to it as Scarlett and her friend George have to figure out puzzles to unlock hidden doors and translate long dead languages like Aramaic to sort out riddles. That last bit is very important to the ending of the movie where I think that Scarlett realizes something which turns out to be key in them possibly escaping the underground hell they find themselves in. That also brings me to another cool twist. Please be aware that SPOILERS are coming.

Creepy stuff going down!

At some point it seems that the movie is hinting that they are actually in Hell! That wasn’t terribly interesting to me, especially since they seem to be hitting the audience over the head with that idea. But then the story suddenly changes up into some sort of test that when Scarlett solves it they are allowed to leave. This is tied into the Philosopher’s stone, which I think is not so much a physical object as it is a power gained thru enlightenment maybe. I’m honestly not sure but found myself fascinated by the resolution of the story and what it hints at. I also think it is brilliant that the filmmakers take you most of the way to the resolution but leave enough of it vague that you have to fill in the blanks yourself.

Even more creepy stuff!

Please understand that if you were hoping for creepy atmosphere, shaky camera, and jump scares typical of the found footage genre you won’t be disappointed with As Above So Below. It has all the things that one can expect from a movie in this subgenre of horror. What makes this one so cool is the great story which you hardly ever see in found footage flicks. We even get a few on camera bits of violence and gore with at least one head being smashed on camera! The locations of the underground catacombs and the cramped tunnels give the entire movie a claustrophobic feeling that also goes a long way to setting the atmosphere and giving the audience an emotional gut punch on more than a couple occasions. Seriously this movie has it all.

I can’t think of a bad thing to say about this one. With that in mind I’m going to enthusiastically recommend As Above So Below. I promise you that you haven’t seen anything quite like this one.

© Copyright 2020 John Shatzer