This could be the worst horror movie I have ever seen . The only reason I gave it 3 stars was the cheesiness of the special effects. The whole movie is like something my friends would have made in high school.
9 Reviews
So bad
bigshow0274524 March 2019
Really Disappointing
Armin_Nikkhah_Shirazi2 July 2023
There are many different subgenres of found footage horror films, but one which is definitely and regrettably under-represented is what might be called "action-horror".
These are found footage movies which trade slow burn and mystery for a fast pace and lots of action. The best of these also happens to be in my opinion the best found footage horror film I know of, REC(2008), but more recent examples include the "Ride in the Park" and "Safe Haven" segments in the found footage anthology V/H/S 2 (2013) (which are also its best segments) and DASHCAM (2021).
I find fast-paced found footage movies to be a lot of fun and wished there were many more of these. SHALLOW CREEK CULT has a script that could have easily lent itself for that. There is not much of a build-up, there are several "action scenes", and it could have been adopted to have a fast pace.
Yet, nothing much was done with this. We have an almost cliche horror scenario of a couple guys holding out in a house and surrounded by some kind of monsters, but this has to be one of the lamest treatments of this scenario ever. The effects and costumes are bottom fare, and the "action scenes" where the characters end up fighting with the monsters, are often painfully dull.
The movie does have a few funny scenes, and the dialogue, while not top notch, helps make the characters relatable. There is, however, one scene which raises ethical issues the movie refuses to engage with in any meaningful manner.
So much more could have been done with this. What a pity.
These are found footage movies which trade slow burn and mystery for a fast pace and lots of action. The best of these also happens to be in my opinion the best found footage horror film I know of, REC(2008), but more recent examples include the "Ride in the Park" and "Safe Haven" segments in the found footage anthology V/H/S 2 (2013) (which are also its best segments) and DASHCAM (2021).
I find fast-paced found footage movies to be a lot of fun and wished there were many more of these. SHALLOW CREEK CULT has a script that could have easily lent itself for that. There is not much of a build-up, there are several "action scenes", and it could have been adopted to have a fast pace.
Yet, nothing much was done with this. We have an almost cliche horror scenario of a couple guys holding out in a house and surrounded by some kind of monsters, but this has to be one of the lamest treatments of this scenario ever. The effects and costumes are bottom fare, and the "action scenes" where the characters end up fighting with the monsters, are often painfully dull.
The movie does have a few funny scenes, and the dialogue, while not top notch, helps make the characters relatable. There is, however, one scene which raises ethical issues the movie refuses to engage with in any meaningful manner.
So much more could have been done with this. What a pity.
Toy guns and epic special effects
KoolCatReviews31 January 2021
This film really made me think that filming your own 'home style' movie might not be the best idea. It's almost funny how bad it is, I wish they went to town and made the whloe movie more fun because alot of this is a drag. The dialogue is oh my gosh so bad. How do movies like this even get in amazon prime? Not 1 star though because of effort and epic music at the end.
I can't believe this is actually a movie.
jackrmiller-6075625 October 2016
I found this on Amazon Prime and I hate to say it, but it's the worst film I've ever seen. It's the sort of film I would have made with a video camera when I was 12. It's got 28 ratings on IMDb and 2 reviews. I've never seen so few. Sorry King Jeff but I won't be recommending this to anyone in a great hurry... You can't hear the dialogue, nothing happens in the entire film, the characters are not likable and the introduction section of people discussing the cult is one of the most embarrassing things I've had the misfortune to clap my eyes upon. The other review on here refers to this as 'bottom of the barrel' and I couldn't say I agree more.
Ham-Fisted Writing and Halloween Masks
theoceaneer2 June 2016
I think we may have found it, folks -- the bottom of the found footage barrel. "Shallow Creek Cult" is what happens when two guys get a camcorder and spend a hundred bucks at Party City for production design. But it's not the cheapness of "Cult" that offends me -- I've seen better done with less -- but the fact that the screenplay violates all of my personal rules of good narrative.
I think the writing is supposed to be humorously self-aware, and that might work in a better movie, but "Cult" is constantly calling out found footage tropes while simultaneously indulging in them. If your characters expound on the stupidity of splitting up to investigate, and then immediately split up to investigate, it seems less like your screenplay is hip and edgy and more like your characters are dumb. The offense is compounded by the ham-fisted way that these conversations are shoehorned into the movie. At one point, the characters are fleeing through the woods, and one of them says "Hold up a minute, shouldn't we talk about...?" And then they talk about some absurd element of the script.
Second, never name-drop better movies in a bad movie. This movie name-drops "Blair Witch" and "Scarface", both of which are vastly superior to this dreck. And unfortunately for this calamity, Blair Witch had a better script -- and it was improvised.
Third -- and this one could possibly be chalked up to budget -- "Cult" is constantly telling rather than showing. A good five minutes of the film (it seems like -- it may have been shorter, but my relative experience of time slowed to a crawl) is given over to READING NEWSPAPER CLIPPINGS. And not just the relevant bits ("Man consumed by cannibals!"), but the incredibly boring biographical information from the beginning of the article. Good job, Screenwriter/Director/Production Designer/Lead Actors/Gaffer -- you wrote the whole newspaper article. That is some legit world building, but we don't need to HEAR the whole article.
What's worse, all of the interesting bits are either not shown, or are shown in quick cutaways. We are told there's a body in a tub, but we never actually SEE it. A woman is attacked by cannibals, WE ARE TOLD, but all we get to actually see is some stage blood and a bad K-Mart wig. We are TOLD that the cultists appear to be inhuman -- but we are not actually shown, because that would reveal that the cultists are, in fact, wearing latex masks from the local halloween superstore (to be fair, we do get to see an awful lot of the cultists' hands -- which do appear to be from the local halloween superstore).
The final nail in the coffin for this film is that it lacks any sort of meaningful plot, arc, or resolution. The characters do not learn or change, nothing meaningful is revealed about the menace of the cultists, and we as an audience are completely unmoved by our characters' plight. The film raises plenty of questions -- whose house is this? Who are the cultists? Where did they come from? Why is no one doing anything about it? -- and answers exactly none of them. And this might bother me more, if I cared AT ALL about anyone or anything in this movie. One could create a nearly identical film by recording a couple of high-school kids driving to a "Haunted House" attraction, going through it, and then driving home. Bracket that with some foreboding white text on a black screen, and you have "Shallow Creek Cult".
There is nothing to recommend this film, and I am diminished by having seen it.
I think the writing is supposed to be humorously self-aware, and that might work in a better movie, but "Cult" is constantly calling out found footage tropes while simultaneously indulging in them. If your characters expound on the stupidity of splitting up to investigate, and then immediately split up to investigate, it seems less like your screenplay is hip and edgy and more like your characters are dumb. The offense is compounded by the ham-fisted way that these conversations are shoehorned into the movie. At one point, the characters are fleeing through the woods, and one of them says "Hold up a minute, shouldn't we talk about...?" And then they talk about some absurd element of the script.
Second, never name-drop better movies in a bad movie. This movie name-drops "Blair Witch" and "Scarface", both of which are vastly superior to this dreck. And unfortunately for this calamity, Blair Witch had a better script -- and it was improvised.
Third -- and this one could possibly be chalked up to budget -- "Cult" is constantly telling rather than showing. A good five minutes of the film (it seems like -- it may have been shorter, but my relative experience of time slowed to a crawl) is given over to READING NEWSPAPER CLIPPINGS. And not just the relevant bits ("Man consumed by cannibals!"), but the incredibly boring biographical information from the beginning of the article. Good job, Screenwriter/Director/Production Designer/Lead Actors/Gaffer -- you wrote the whole newspaper article. That is some legit world building, but we don't need to HEAR the whole article.
What's worse, all of the interesting bits are either not shown, or are shown in quick cutaways. We are told there's a body in a tub, but we never actually SEE it. A woman is attacked by cannibals, WE ARE TOLD, but all we get to actually see is some stage blood and a bad K-Mart wig. We are TOLD that the cultists appear to be inhuman -- but we are not actually shown, because that would reveal that the cultists are, in fact, wearing latex masks from the local halloween superstore (to be fair, we do get to see an awful lot of the cultists' hands -- which do appear to be from the local halloween superstore).
The final nail in the coffin for this film is that it lacks any sort of meaningful plot, arc, or resolution. The characters do not learn or change, nothing meaningful is revealed about the menace of the cultists, and we as an audience are completely unmoved by our characters' plight. The film raises plenty of questions -- whose house is this? Who are the cultists? Where did they come from? Why is no one doing anything about it? -- and answers exactly none of them. And this might bother me more, if I cared AT ALL about anyone or anything in this movie. One could create a nearly identical film by recording a couple of high-school kids driving to a "Haunted House" attraction, going through it, and then driving home. Bracket that with some foreboding white text on a black screen, and you have "Shallow Creek Cult".
There is nothing to recommend this film, and I am diminished by having seen it.
Another found footage film in which very little happens
Leofwine_draca19 March 2017
Warning: Spoilers
SHALLOW CREEK CULT is another found footage horror film heavily indebted to THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. This one's about a pair of brothers whose job is to scatter a loved one's ashes in a specific rural spot in order to fulfil their final wishes. Unfortunately for them, said spot turns out to be the home ground of a cannibalistic cult with murder in mind...
I do like found footage films as a whole and I wanted to like this movie, but it's a film that is very difficult to enjoy overall. The problem is that the enemy has no menace. The cult members are nothing more than kids wearing robes and Halloween masks who could well be your garden variety trick or treaters. The main two actors are quite believable but they're given very little to work with and the endless scenes of them reacting to unseen threats do become tiring before long. There's far too little incident here; it's all set-up with no decent pay-off, and that makes it a real patience tester.
I do like found footage films as a whole and I wanted to like this movie, but it's a film that is very difficult to enjoy overall. The problem is that the enemy has no menace. The cult members are nothing more than kids wearing robes and Halloween masks who could well be your garden variety trick or treaters. The main two actors are quite believable but they're given very little to work with and the endless scenes of them reacting to unseen threats do become tiring before long. There's far too little incident here; it's all set-up with no decent pay-off, and that makes it a real patience tester.
Shallow Creek Crap
Stevieboy66617 November 2023
Two brothers - Jessie and Getty Carmichael - take a drive out to the remote Shallow Creek Pond to scatter their Gramps ashes but encounter some weird looking (read "crap") cannibalistic creatures that appear to be of alien origin. They take refuge in a house which has CCTV cameras all over the place, which comes in handy as this is a Found Footage (FF) movie. Even when they aren't filming themselves then the CCTV covers the rest. They do film themselves doing the most mundane things, such as checking their car over before they depart, and why is it in so many of these FF movies that they still manage to hold a camera and carry on filming when they are fighting for their very lives??!! The acting is terrible, the brothers mumble so badly that I often found it hard to understand what was being said/mumbled. The picture quality is awful. As I have also mentioned the creature make-up is very poor, and the attempt to pass this nonsense off as real is laughable. The running time may only be 70 minutes but very little happens in this yawn-fest and it is a very boring and painful 70 minutes, Watching a clock for the same amount of time would probably be more fun. I have seen many bad FF movies but this stinker is a strong contender for the worst one so far. Absolutely abysmal.
Very good - guys did a lot with a little...
joseph-8869327 December 2016
When I happen to tune into a 'found footage' flick, I typically use the 'back button' within seconds, but for some reason, this one snagged my attention, and then I was quickly hooked right to the end. For lack of a better word, the entire thing had a natural cadence that is lacking in many films with far greater resources than these guys were working with. The dialog was well done, as was the acting. They were totally believable, and I repeatedly found myself thinking that I and my brother could have been saying the same thing and acting the same way. The story was, well, almost secondary, and the effects were comical, but none of that detracted from the character study of two older brothers dealing with a threatening situation while retaining their love and devotion to each other. I give it 8 stars not by of comparison with any other movies, but because I believe these guys are capable of even better, and hopefully this will spur them on to shoot for a 10.
Not disappointed
gracealdous11 June 2016
This film was better than I expected it to be. It seems to have been lovingly made. I found that I really enjoyed it, especially after viewing the credits. It looks like it was the project of mainly one person. That kind of creative control is rarely enjoyed. I also liked the setting a lot. It was isolated and not unbelievable at all. The acting wasn't bad. The dialogue was believable. It's not full of great special effects or big scare scenes but it has a good, realistic tension. It's fun to watch. I was pleasantly surprised. It didn't try to go over the top and you can tell there weren't too many cooks in the kitchen. Overall, a job well done. :)
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