For a potential teenage target audience, the narrative technique of "found footage" and the first-person storytelling from someone recording the scenes with a camera (or their phone) extends to a wider market of viewers who live to immortalize what they believe to be existential milestones. This technique, seemingly gasping like a freshly caught fish and considered overdone since its inception with "The Blair Witch Project" (1999), through the tedious sequels of "Rec" (2007 - 2014) and "Paranormal Activity" (2007 - 2021), is far from obsolete, raging more relevant than ever, at least nine years ago when this "flick" was produced.
The "found footage" offers a sense of immediacy and realism that other narrative techniques struggle to achieve. Seeing the events from the first-person perspective, viewers dive deeper into the experience, feeling like part of the story. This can make the scares and tension more impactful, as the audience feels like an active participant. In this movie, specifically, the technique is one of the few things that contribute to creating the required atmosphere of terror. It opens windows to the spaces created by cinematographer Andrew Davis's visual language. Plus, it smartly shifts from one passive observer to another. It doesn't focus on a single carrier. Thus, the narrative is assumed by different characters, who record from their devices. This approach multiplies the possibilities of surprise. Not being limited to a single character's perspective, moments of suspense can emerge from different angles and at unexpected times, leveraging the change in narrator to play with the audience's anticipation and anxiety. The uncertainty about who will hold the camera next and what new horrors their lens will reveal adds an additional layer of intrigue and mystery.
However, it fails to fully capitalize on the opportunity presented by this variety of perspectives, with the different friends gathering in the woods to mess around at night with their little flashlights. We spend most of the time engulfed in a dizzying whirl of figures in the shadows when we're not being dazzled by the lights from the characters running back and forth. The chaotic and erratic proposal from Davis adds to the already confusing execution of a script that, while based on a solid plot, by its simple structure, gets tangled in surrealism. By perhaps wanting to be too innovative, or simply trying to maintain the viewer's attention, it dissolves into nonsense that we find little clarity or satisfactory answers to. Facing a resolution as dark or more than the images in which we've been swimming for an 85-minute runtime, which feels like it could be double or more. A dark or ambiguous resolution in a horror movie is not a flaw in itself; it can be a powerful tool to leave a lasting impression and invite reflection. But the path needs to be constructed with clarity and purpose. Even amid ambiguity, the viewer must be able to find a sense of closure or understand the underlying themes and motivations.
The creators, Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, hit the keys together to birth a script that wanders lost like a sardine in the Sahara Desert, crumbling like a house of cards from the get-go due to a clear laziness in creating a "script" with some "head" but no "legs," because it goes nowhere. Atmosphere, tension, mystery... it brings us to the edge of primal horror... but that's all. The generated tension, with all its potential, fades with any cat-like scare, and after much leading us on, it culminates in a bunch of scenes with main actresses' hysterical screams, akin to a soprano solo in contemporary experimental music.
What works best is the setting in the woods: the darkness, the perception in a degree of intuitive delirium of what might happen to the protagonists if they venture into the dark jaws of that North American forest, aiming to have a blast in their nighttime game... this sense of anticipation and fear captures the imagination and establishes a state of psychological tension, essential for terror. The forest, in this context, becomes an entity full of mysteries and dangers that challenge rationality and feed the most primitive fears. The protagonists' goal to have a good time with their nighttime game in such a threatening environment introduces a biting irony; their search for fun leads them to confront their own limits and fears, as well as the dark secrets lying at the heart of the forest. This contrast between their innocent intentions and the malice of the environment underscores the recklessness of challenging the unknown and uncontrollable. Yet, such an attractive package is devalued, diminished, empty, against the inaction and sluggishness with which Beck and Woods handle the narrative.
The practical absence of additional extradiegetic music, understandable since we are immersed in the diegetic space (the "handheld camera" removes any distance or barrier between the observer's position and the dramatic development scene), also contributes to the insubstantial and feeble, artificial state of tension generated dissipating even more quickly.
The actors don't stand out in the narrative background of the plot, so they all seem to be part of the decor. They are treated more like passive objects than active subjects. Shelby Young and Chloe Bridges still manage to give some movement to the performance, albeit practically only through flailing and screaming, like a couple of females in a clan of deranged chimpanzees. Perhaps Robin's dog is the least animal of them all, whose barking adds some interest to the sparse dialogues. These, in their scarce share, don't serve in some scenes even as filler. At times, the movie manages to generate more interest or tension through secondary or even non-human elements than through the interaction between its main characters. A missed opportunity to further explore group dynamics, internal conflicts, or personal motivations in a context as rich in dramatic potential as the one presented.
The stunningly handsome actors Mitch Hewer and Carter Jenkins could have, along with the other protagonists (including the dog), given a more profound account of these values, instead of the outrageous superficiality with which, both stereotypically and already trite in legendary teenage terror productions, the themes, conflicts, and dilemmas facing the "personae dramaticae" are treated. Thus, in the male acting camp, the two mentioned are reduced to mere sexualized and "typified" objects. This not only squanders the actors' talent but also perpetuates stereotypes and superficial approaches in the representation of male characters, limiting their contribution to the narrative to their physical appearance or attractiveness, rather than their development as complex and multidimensional characters.
Thus, we reach heights of lazy indolence that can bring the viewer to the brink of drowsiness (after disconnecting from what the movie intends to transmit or communicate). Both because of the lack of development of story and characters, and because it's so empty in the central stretches, that when it finally seems to want to pick up the thread, the audience has no clue what's happening. Beck and Woods want to immerse us so much in the world of characters that paradoxically don't develop at all, and their wanderings, and themselves, so deep into the forest, that we all end up lost. This irony reflects a fundamental disconnect in the construction of the movie that affects its cohesion and its ability to engage. Ultimately, regarding the editing, the editing decisions, possibly attempting to provide coherence or intensify the atmosphere, fail to compensate for the deficiencies in the plot and character development.
Morals, few. Only the recurring and subliminal message that one should not anger the wild nature, especially at night, and where on top of that, we have "evil spirits" that if awakened, well, we've got a whole mess on our hands. Therefore, we must be careful where we go to celebrate lantern festivals and kill the weekend nighttime boredom. A common theme in the terror genre that explores the thin line between the human world and unknown or supernatural domains. This subliminal message serves not only as a warning about respect for forces beyond our understanding but also plays with the human fascination for challenging the limits of our existence and exploring the unknown, often without considering the possible consequences.
This potential background is veiled behind the ineffectiveness and inability to make the movie a worthy representation of a message that keeps the viewer on tenterhooks for a good while before deflating like a balloon whose content is only air, and, by the way, very poorly compressed.
The expectations generated by the premise of the story and the moral dilemmas it raises do not find an echo in a cohesive narrative or convincing character development. Although ambitious in its goals, it fails to deliver the emotional impact or intellectual stimulus that its plot suggests.
The "found footage" offers a sense of immediacy and realism that other narrative techniques struggle to achieve. Seeing the events from the first-person perspective, viewers dive deeper into the experience, feeling like part of the story. This can make the scares and tension more impactful, as the audience feels like an active participant. In this movie, specifically, the technique is one of the few things that contribute to creating the required atmosphere of terror. It opens windows to the spaces created by cinematographer Andrew Davis's visual language. Plus, it smartly shifts from one passive observer to another. It doesn't focus on a single carrier. Thus, the narrative is assumed by different characters, who record from their devices. This approach multiplies the possibilities of surprise. Not being limited to a single character's perspective, moments of suspense can emerge from different angles and at unexpected times, leveraging the change in narrator to play with the audience's anticipation and anxiety. The uncertainty about who will hold the camera next and what new horrors their lens will reveal adds an additional layer of intrigue and mystery.
However, it fails to fully capitalize on the opportunity presented by this variety of perspectives, with the different friends gathering in the woods to mess around at night with their little flashlights. We spend most of the time engulfed in a dizzying whirl of figures in the shadows when we're not being dazzled by the lights from the characters running back and forth. The chaotic and erratic proposal from Davis adds to the already confusing execution of a script that, while based on a solid plot, by its simple structure, gets tangled in surrealism. By perhaps wanting to be too innovative, or simply trying to maintain the viewer's attention, it dissolves into nonsense that we find little clarity or satisfactory answers to. Facing a resolution as dark or more than the images in which we've been swimming for an 85-minute runtime, which feels like it could be double or more. A dark or ambiguous resolution in a horror movie is not a flaw in itself; it can be a powerful tool to leave a lasting impression and invite reflection. But the path needs to be constructed with clarity and purpose. Even amid ambiguity, the viewer must be able to find a sense of closure or understand the underlying themes and motivations.
The creators, Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, hit the keys together to birth a script that wanders lost like a sardine in the Sahara Desert, crumbling like a house of cards from the get-go due to a clear laziness in creating a "script" with some "head" but no "legs," because it goes nowhere. Atmosphere, tension, mystery... it brings us to the edge of primal horror... but that's all. The generated tension, with all its potential, fades with any cat-like scare, and after much leading us on, it culminates in a bunch of scenes with main actresses' hysterical screams, akin to a soprano solo in contemporary experimental music.
What works best is the setting in the woods: the darkness, the perception in a degree of intuitive delirium of what might happen to the protagonists if they venture into the dark jaws of that North American forest, aiming to have a blast in their nighttime game... this sense of anticipation and fear captures the imagination and establishes a state of psychological tension, essential for terror. The forest, in this context, becomes an entity full of mysteries and dangers that challenge rationality and feed the most primitive fears. The protagonists' goal to have a good time with their nighttime game in such a threatening environment introduces a biting irony; their search for fun leads them to confront their own limits and fears, as well as the dark secrets lying at the heart of the forest. This contrast between their innocent intentions and the malice of the environment underscores the recklessness of challenging the unknown and uncontrollable. Yet, such an attractive package is devalued, diminished, empty, against the inaction and sluggishness with which Beck and Woods handle the narrative.
The practical absence of additional extradiegetic music, understandable since we are immersed in the diegetic space (the "handheld camera" removes any distance or barrier between the observer's position and the dramatic development scene), also contributes to the insubstantial and feeble, artificial state of tension generated dissipating even more quickly.
The actors don't stand out in the narrative background of the plot, so they all seem to be part of the decor. They are treated more like passive objects than active subjects. Shelby Young and Chloe Bridges still manage to give some movement to the performance, albeit practically only through flailing and screaming, like a couple of females in a clan of deranged chimpanzees. Perhaps Robin's dog is the least animal of them all, whose barking adds some interest to the sparse dialogues. These, in their scarce share, don't serve in some scenes even as filler. At times, the movie manages to generate more interest or tension through secondary or even non-human elements than through the interaction between its main characters. A missed opportunity to further explore group dynamics, internal conflicts, or personal motivations in a context as rich in dramatic potential as the one presented.
The stunningly handsome actors Mitch Hewer and Carter Jenkins could have, along with the other protagonists (including the dog), given a more profound account of these values, instead of the outrageous superficiality with which, both stereotypically and already trite in legendary teenage terror productions, the themes, conflicts, and dilemmas facing the "personae dramaticae" are treated. Thus, in the male acting camp, the two mentioned are reduced to mere sexualized and "typified" objects. This not only squanders the actors' talent but also perpetuates stereotypes and superficial approaches in the representation of male characters, limiting their contribution to the narrative to their physical appearance or attractiveness, rather than their development as complex and multidimensional characters.
Thus, we reach heights of lazy indolence that can bring the viewer to the brink of drowsiness (after disconnecting from what the movie intends to transmit or communicate). Both because of the lack of development of story and characters, and because it's so empty in the central stretches, that when it finally seems to want to pick up the thread, the audience has no clue what's happening. Beck and Woods want to immerse us so much in the world of characters that paradoxically don't develop at all, and their wanderings, and themselves, so deep into the forest, that we all end up lost. This irony reflects a fundamental disconnect in the construction of the movie that affects its cohesion and its ability to engage. Ultimately, regarding the editing, the editing decisions, possibly attempting to provide coherence or intensify the atmosphere, fail to compensate for the deficiencies in the plot and character development.
Morals, few. Only the recurring and subliminal message that one should not anger the wild nature, especially at night, and where on top of that, we have "evil spirits" that if awakened, well, we've got a whole mess on our hands. Therefore, we must be careful where we go to celebrate lantern festivals and kill the weekend nighttime boredom. A common theme in the terror genre that explores the thin line between the human world and unknown or supernatural domains. This subliminal message serves not only as a warning about respect for forces beyond our understanding but also plays with the human fascination for challenging the limits of our existence and exploring the unknown, often without considering the possible consequences.
This potential background is veiled behind the ineffectiveness and inability to make the movie a worthy representation of a message that keeps the viewer on tenterhooks for a good while before deflating like a balloon whose content is only air, and, by the way, very poorly compressed.
The expectations generated by the premise of the story and the moral dilemmas it raises do not find an echo in a cohesive narrative or convincing character development. Although ambitious in its goals, it fails to deliver the emotional impact or intellectual stimulus that its plot suggests.