THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT has a lot to answer for . It started a fad for what became known as " lost footage film " and you can think of a couple more off the top of your head . You also know how formulaic these movies are too and when you've seen one you've basically seen them all . You know , improvised realist acting that appears too wooden or too over emphatic to be real and video scenes that conveniently relay the whole story intercut with random scenes trying - and utterly failing -to paint a picture of a day like any other that ultimately ends in horror
EYES IN THE DARK continues the trend and yet for some reason I found myself enjoying this film much more than I did with the over hyped and overrated BLAIR WITCH and the big budget CLOVERFIELD . I'm not going to make any claims that EITD is some de facto masterwork of cinema because it's not and is merely a low budget horror film shot on a video camera being waved about . But what it does it does better than most films in its ilk and it simply does it by having the actors shriek and act terrified at some noises just out of sight . I found some of the scenes very creepy which surprised me since I wasn't expecting much from the film and perhaps that had something to do with it