Let me tell you, I love horror films. Not slasher films (ones with too much blood, and puke, and bodily functions), but I love mind screwing horror. Show me a little of what's going on, and let my imagination go wild. It's good when they get it right, but a pretty hard combination to do successfully. To this end, I've turned to Japanese horror - the reason is that Japanese horror has the classic tropes, but the imagination gets a little too weird at times. (Plus, it has that built in element of the foreign/familiar to it, and that only builds tension.)
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It was pretty well paced. The movie starts out faster, almost immediately scaring the crud out of you with a well placed and done special effect. It builds suspense pretty well - the characters are not that annoying, but I found that since the movie takes place in 1988, it is an annoyingly dated movie with costumes. Another annoyance is the fact that since the characters take the camera with them - the movie feels like it is a video game movie. There is no sense of jerky movement like footsteps, but I guess that was a stylistic choice, as the sense of movement can cause motion sickness (hello, there, Blair Witch Project). The plot twist is pretty weak, you'd be able to guess at what happens at Grandmother's house well before the movie ends.
I would say, see this - at least it ain't a gory movie for October/Halloween.
*spoilers begin*
Anyhow, I headed to the theatre with a bunch of my friends in tow. I grab my drink - a Nestea hidden in my purse, and I sit down in the middle of the row. The movie starts off a bit faster - there's a "pseudo-soft-core" porn scene - the couple in question decide it's a good idea to make a sex tape. They get interrupted - and basically the movie goes down from there. The standard trope is that the female character believes that there is something wrong, but this movie flips it around. The male protagonist this time around is a wedding photographer - he films weddings for a living, and thus has the technology to film the activity this time around. The family has two girls, and one of them has an imaginary friend. Things start to go south when Katie at the beginning of the film drops off a case of old videotapes - and of course, they get robbed, and the videotapes disappear. Shortly after, the kids discover that the imaginary friend isn't that friendly. (There's a scene in which the father discovers a symbol written on the crawlspace the imaginary friend lives in - think the "deathly hallows symbol" minus the wand.) He discovers a coven in a book in which the women brainwash young girls into having sons - and disappear them - the symbol is the same as the one found in the crawlspace. Eventually they end up at Grandma's house - and the showdown with the demon begins.
*spoilers end*
It was pretty well paced. The movie starts out faster, almost immediately scaring the crud out of you with a well placed and done special effect. It builds suspense pretty well - the characters are not that annoying, but I found that since the movie takes place in 1988, it is an annoyingly dated movie with costumes. Another annoyance is the fact that since the characters take the camera with them - the movie feels like it is a video game movie. There is no sense of jerky movement like footsteps, but I guess that was a stylistic choice, as the sense of movement can cause motion sickness (hello, there, Blair Witch Project). The plot twist is pretty weak, you'd be able to guess at what happens at Grandmother's house well before the movie ends.
I would say, see this - at least it ain't a gory movie for October/Halloween.
