Director: Kim Noonan
Year: 2024
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Creature Feature
Plot:
Trying to retell a creepy story, hosts of a local urban legend podcast tell the story about a pair of sisters and their friend trying to celebrate their graduation when they notice an unusual power outage affecting the area and other residents disappearing around them realize a monster is responsible.
Review:
This was a fine if somewhat troubling genre effort. Among its better features is the strong setup that allows for some genuinely fun elements to come together. Featuring the main wraparound of the creepypasta coming into play with why they’re telling the story, the main setup of the couple coming together to film their graduation celebrations only to gradually get unnerved when the supernatural blackout disrupts their plans and plunges them into the race for survival against the creatures that come about hunting them in the darkness offers a lot to like. This brings about the first half of getting to know them, getting to know what the couples are about, and their intended plans for the future before then thrusting them into survival mode against the unseen creatures that are hiding in the darkness. Using found-footage for everything keeps it fun with the lack of light already at a premium because of the blackout before relying on the machine for everything is a solid touch making the escalating tension and thrilling attacks here far more intense as this one goes along.
Otherwise, there are some underwhelming elements here that come about more from the filmmaking style than anything else. The idea of filming this one as a found-footage film during a blackout is a great idea to build tension and suspense during the film, but instead, this one manages to be nearly impossible to tell what’s going on as the lack of light here makes it harder to see anything than anything else. Restricting everything to a single light from the phone they’re recording on rather than dealing with the situation normally as the majority of the second half is frantically screaming, calling out for each other, or bloodied blobs running around in the background sending them screaming in the other direction so it’s hard to see what’s going on. It makes the film feel far cheaper than it should with this approach as the dearth of monster action and no real violence being hidden like this is a bit of an obvious sign of these issues that are caused due to the filmmaking tactic, and also highlights how repetitive that part of the film is with the same thing happening without much deviation, all keeping this one down from what it could’ve been.
Overview: **/5
A solid enough idea but held down overall, there are some big issues here that do manage to bring it down despite some intriguing elements present which could've been quite fun. Those who appreciate this kind of feature, don’t mind these kinds of elements, or are hardcore found-footage aficionados would be the most likely to enjoy this one while most others out there should heed caution.
Comments
Post a Comment