Found Footage Fest 2012: The Tunnel

I realize this is late as hell, but better late than never, no? Anyway, I've had this movie on my radar for awhile. The idea behind it was a group of people in Australia funded the movie through a Kickstarter like thing and torrent downloads! I know, great idea, huh? I should do some projects like that....

Anyway. The story behind the movie is the Australian government came up with a neat idea to recycle water: use these underground reservoirs that aren't being used! There's just water! Sitting there! Crazy! But while starting the process, the government suddenly stops and offers no reason why.

So it's up to a plucky film crew to figure out why! And that's our story.

I'm not gonna lie, this isn't gonna be a long review. It's like trying to write a full 500 page review on "The Blair Witch Project", you just need the basic set up and what happens and what I thought and that's it.

The film crew consists of Natasha, Tangles, Steve, and Pete and they go into the tunnels to look around. It's typical at first, with them roaming around, looking at shit, talking to the camera, and setting up a creepy vibe.

And there is a creepy vibe. I would NOT want to be down in those tunnels at any time. Then SHIT starts happening. Tangles leaves to get some audio and suddenly he goes missing. They find a shit ton of blood and go "oh shit" and soon must get out of there.

Things get MORE creepy when we see one of the people puts a camera down, but then SOMEONE else that we don't know picks up the camera and films them secretly! WHOA!

So what's happening? Basically, there are creatures who live in the dark. It's "The Descent" and "CHUD". That's basically it. One of the other guys gets attacked and killed, they run around until they find a way out and guess what? THEY LIVE! It's amazing!

Overall, the movie is good at setting up a scary tone and keeping your interest and wondering what's happening. The scares are good and I was worried for the people the entire movie. I say give this movie a shot, you will be surprised.



-Jason

Found Footage Fest 2012: Lake Mungo

I never really heard of this movie until I was doing research for this blogathon. I said "why not?" cause it's on Instant Watch. I didn't know anything about it going into it, and frankly (SPOILER ALERT FOR MY REVIEW) I kinda wish I kept it that way.

The set up is this. A family goes on an outing to a lake (not Lake Mungo, another lake) and the daughter Alice disappears. A few weeks later, they find her dead body in the water. After that, the brother Mathew decides to set up cameras all over the place and captures spooky shit happening all over the house, like figures roaming around late at night. They team up with a psychic named Ray to get to the bottom of this.

That sounds all simple, right? Here's the problem with this movie: IT TAKES TOO FUCKING LONG TO GET TO A POINT!!!! I've seen my fair share of boring movies before but holy fuckballs this movie is BOOOOOORRRRRING!!! Nothing scary happens, pretty much throughout the movie. There's maybe ONE really creepy thing toward the end that I'll mention in a minute but that's it.

Now, you're probably thinking, blind person hearing this review as read by your reader, "if the brother set up a camera and caught something, isn't that creepy?" Well, it kinda was but two things: 1. when they show the footage you don't know it's suppose to be a "ghost" cause it's too damn blurry and 2. (Maybe spoiler but who gives a fuck) the spooky footage wasn't a ghost...IT WAS MATHEW!! He was pretending to be his dead sisters ghost to....I don't even know. I think it was literally NO REASON!

So then the movie is just going on and on, being boring when they look at some footage again and find a NON-GHOST creeping in the background. They realize this non-ghost is their neighbor and he's looking for a sex tape he made with the dead daughter. While she was alive. It's not established how old the daughter was suppose to be so we're not sure how this plays out. I GUESS she was a minor cause the police was looking for the neighbor. But I forgot to mention this is an Australian film so I dunno.

Anyway, Mom totally forgot about Alice going to a school trip to Lake Mungo where she lost her cell phone and maybe something on there will give some answers to the nothing that's been happening. The family goes there, finds the cell phone, and here is where we get our only scary moment in the movie. Alice was visited by a ghost...OF HERSELF!!!! LE GASP!!

And that's it. Right after that, the family is like "Alice is at peace" and they move out of their house. And apparently when you're a ghost you can time travel cause we revisit some old pictures and I think we're suppose to see Alice in the background, but again it was blurry as fuck so it was hard to tell. There is kind of an interesting moment where Alice is talking to psychic Ray and her dreams are of her being a ghost in the present. That's about it.

Yeah, I was bored to tears. During parts of it, my mind would drift off and I'd think about other project I have going on or the latest movie I'd need to watch for The Lair or MILF and then I'd go "Oh yeah I should pay attention". Seriously, this movie is fucking boring. Just skip it.



-Jason

Found Footage Fest 2012: Man Bites Dog

I probably shouldn't have listened to Wikipedia on this one. I made up my list from their list of "found footage films" and this movie was on that list. I've been hearing for a long time to see this movie by Steve from 1001plus, so I said "sure why not?" Turns out, it's a bit less "found footage" and more "fake documentary". I GUESS the ending makes you think "found footage" but if I were do this movie, I could do "Behind The Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon" so whatever.

Anyway. "Man Bites Dog". I have no idea what to say about this movie. It's not an easy movie to describe. No, I take that back. It's an easy movie to describe but it'll be so fucking short.

A film crew follows around a serial killer. The end.

See? Sure, some stuff happens like we learn about his life a little bit. We learn he's a bit crazy. Maybe a mild asshole. We learn he makes his money from stealing it from the people he kills. There's a lot of talking scenes. A LOT OF TALKING SCENES. Oh and this movie is in French. I do not mind foreign films but it does get a bit tiring trying to keep up with dialogue constantly. Anyway, the killer is named Ben and the filmmaker is named Remy. I just felt like sharing that.

There really isn't a lot to talk about in this movie. I guess this is a mild black comedy but I really only laughed at one part and I'm a bit nervous to write it here...aw fuck it. I seem to be the Eminem of the LAMB lately, what's more controversy?!? FUCK DA POLICE!!!

So Ben talks about how "urban renewal" caused his...girlfriend? favorite prostitute? favorite old lady who happens to be a prostitute? to leave her house and move into another apartment or something. So he goes to the construction site to kill some guys and one of them includes a night watchman, who happens to be black. Ben goes on a rant about hiring black people to be night watchmen and how he doesn't like to touch black people because of the AIDS. Then he decided to see if black dudes really did have big dicks and apparently that is true.

The film moves along and eventually the film crew seem to get into the whole killing thing. At two different points they lose two different sound guys cause they got caught in some cross fire. Oh yeah, at random points in the movie, Ben is involved in shootouts with random people. One of them is a guy he was trying to kill but I dunno who the other shootout people were.

There's a point where Ben is hospitalized cause he's also a boxer (random, I know but it's a French movie so I excused it). A scene I liked was when he came home from the hospital, it was also his birthday. Remy, the grandma prostitute, his maybe girlfriend, and some guy we never seen before is there. The guy is super loud and obnoxious. Remy gives Ben a holster for his gun, which gives him an excuse to shoot the loud guy. This was funny cause everyone acted like this was normal. At one point, he tried to kill a postman while recovering but the postman gets away. And I guess this got Ben arrested cause suddenly he was in jail, accused of murder.

But then Ben breaks out and....immediately goes to all the places the cops should be looking for him like his parents house or this one chick's house who may or may not be his girlfriend. Turns some both the maybe girlfriend and his parents are killed, another shootout occurs where Ben, Remy, and the film crew are shot and the film ends.

That's all I can say about the movie, really. There's a lot of stuff that happens but it'll take too long to describe everything. Like when he decided to kill a family in the suburbs. Or when he kills an old lady. Or when he gets drunk while wearing a priests collar. Stuff like that just...happens.

I'm not sure what I thought of it. It was somewhat interesting and right when I was getting bored, there was dozens of shots of people getting killed so it got me interested again. I'll give it a middle of the road rating. It's not bad for a French film that seems to be fancy and gory at the same time. I still don't consider this a "found footage" film but fuck it, I wanted to do a review today anyway so here it is.



-Jason

Found Footage Fest 2012: The St. Francisville Experiment

One Guy: Hey I got an idea
Other Guy: Yes?
One Guy: That movie "The Blair Witch Project" sure is popular.
Other Guy: It sure is!
One Guy: How about we make a movie JUST LIKE that but instead....IT'S IN A HOUSE!!
Other Guy: You're a fucking genius! Here's $30 dollars!
One Guy: That's half our budget already!

Or something like that.

"The St. Francisville Experiment" starts off like a documentary with a guy telling us everything that we're about to see is totes real cause it wouldn't be a "found footage" film without that! Then we meet our characters. Paul is the leader, Tim is the camera man, Madison is the psychic/ghost expert, I guess, and Ryan (female) is...very fucking annoying. I have no idea what the fuck she was doing there but SPOILER ALERT she was REALLY fucking annoying.

Here's the scoop: a long ass time ago, some lady who name isn't important was discovered torturing slaves in her house. She managed to escape to a house in St. Francisville and this is the house our cast is going to spend the rest of the movie in.

I'm really gonna make this short cause there isn't a whole lot here. A good 45 minutes of them in the house is just them roaming around scaring each other and everybody acting like douchebags. Madison wants to do weird psychic stuff all the time, which gets annoying. Ryan screams at FUCKING EVERYTHING for no reason, and they don't find a lot of stuff.

There's one part that had me wondering if this was a spoof of found footage movies because they hear a noise in a cabinet and they take forever to open it and when they do....a fucking cat jumps out at them. I'm not even kidding. And they tried to play this seriously! It was stupid.

They finally go into the attic, which has the highest amounts of ghost activity and they film a chair flying across the room. Things start to pick up here but then they slow the fuck down when Madison says they all must separate and each go into a haunted room to rid the house of evil ghosts. It slows down cause Paul is chosen to go into the spooky attic and I swear to fucking god he spends 10 FUCKING MINUTES on the staircase whining about not wanting to go into the attic.

FINALLY they all go into their rooms and do a spell to release the evil spirits when all sorts of hell break loose. There's a creepy moment in Madison's room when we see a ghost appear in a mirror and attack her. Then Tim finds a secret passage way and is dragged by unseen forces. I'm gonna go ahead and spoil the ending because this isn't a movie I don't think you should waste your time with. Everybody gets out alive. Seriously. They all manage to escape the ghosts and the house and end up alive, just with insomina and nightmares. That's it.

So this movie was a giant waste of time. It had potential and there were some good scares, but unfortunately it wasn't enough. Skip this movie.



-Jason

Found Footage Fest 2012: The Last Broadcast

Before I begin, I just want to thanks Bill from Outside The Cinema for bringing this movie to my attention. He did a list on his show a few weeks back of movies that are similar to "The Blair Witch Project". Knowing I was going to do this blog-a-thon, I took notes and realized I never heard of "The Last Broadcast". So I just wanted to give him credit for putting this movie in my life.

With that said...

"The Last Broadcast" is less "Blair Witch" and more kinda like "The Poughkeepsie Tapes". The big hullabaloo (like that?) is that "Poughkeepsie" wasn't around yet. But truth be told..."Blair Witch" wasn't around yet! LE GASP! ANOTHER movie about a group of people going into the woods and something spooky happens to them while capturing it on video? WOW!

The story is this. There's a public access TV show called "Fact or Bullshit Fiction" hosted buy two guys. One guy is named Mark and the other is named Locus. A problem immediately sprung to mind when I saw Locus. I was so fucking distracted because Locus looks ALMOST EXACTLY like Sebastian Gutierrez from Films From The Supermassive Black Hole! I mean LOOK!

Yeah, that's super fucking uncanny, it's weird.

Anyway, while I try to push that off to the side, Mark and Seb-er, Locus host this show that talks about the paranormal and stuff like that. The film is from 1998 but the story starts off in 1995, which means not that long prior this fancy new thing called THE INTERNET was unveiled. So using THE INTERNET, the hosts ask their audience for suggestions on future shows and they get asked to look for The Jersey Devil. If you're not familiar with that story, click here. It's too long to explain here. Or watch "The X-Files" episode about it.

So our hosts take that idea and run with it. They get a small crew together and just for laughs they bring along a guy who says he's psychic and his name is James. James acts weird throughout the entire ordeal, having a troubled past and being a reclusive. And look at that, he LOVES this INTERNET thing!

The story jumps ahead a bit as we learn Mark, Locus, and this other guy named Rein all were murdered out in the forest. Only James came back alive. Soon, a huge mount of evidence stacks up against James proving he murdered them and is sentenced to life in prison. This brings us to the "present" (RE: 1997) where a film maker named David is making a documentary about the murders and James.

So at times it does the whole thing of talking to random dudes who "knew" the victims, James' doctor, and other people that just say stuff. During all this, we see pieces of footage from that night in the woods and Locus changes a tape in the camera, but the new tape...is never found! UNTIL NOW!!!! OH NOES!!!!!1

It's played up all mysteriously, that this tape appeared on David's front porch one day in 1997 but the tape was damaged, so he and some chick named Michelle have to piece it all together to figure out what happened. They show parts of it and of course they want to "be real" and have the footage messed up so the sound goes in and out and the picture is distorted.

The footage shows Locus and Rein roaming around looking for Mark. They find a shitload of blood and soon someone behind them murders them. But the tape is too messed up to clearly make out who it is. WHO DID IT?! Was it James?! Mark?! The Jersey Devil! If you DON'T WANT TO KNOW, SKIP THE NEXT PARAGRAPH AND GO TO THE END PLEASE AND THANK YOU!

...

...

Just in case...

Ok. So in the weirdest twist I've ever seen in a movie, the killer ends up being David, the film maker. Why? How? None of this is really explained. I'm going to assume it's symbolic of how the media wants to make a story so in order to do so, the media goes and kills people their own self or some shit. I dunno, it really wasn't explained. It left me royally confused. I am a bit pissed off about this ended cause I was invested in this movie and now it feels like it ruined it for me. I mean...that's it? It couldn't have just been a ghost or the actual Jersey Devil? It's kind of a let down. I guess this is why this movie didn't get as popular as "Blair Witch".

SPOILERS OVER.

Yes, the first part of the movie is interesting, then it gets creepy, then it will let you down. In terms of found footage movies, there are now way better ones to choose from, so maybe just avoid this one at all costs. Ok, if I changed your mind about wanting to see this movie, go ahead and read the spoiler. Yeah, stupid isn't it?



-Jason