sxtape

I see the reviews are harsh, I won't be the one to break the ice on a quite good one, in order to attract attention or mislead people, but for someone who never was into found footage movies, I got to say this one kept me still, watching, waiting for more.

It starts slow, some nudity, some jokes and builds up to the key point in around 20 minute. From there on, it grows more and more and starts to deliver. Sure, nothing mind blowing, but considering the fact that zombie movies and found footage are spreading like a virus lately, once you do find a good one, it's good to get things straight. In my honest opinion, SxTape is a good example and here are the reasons: 1) acting was good; 2) characters were typical and natural; 3) once the tension makes an appearance it stays there; 4) one or two good scares (let's face it, found footage can't really be scary anymore;) 5) the twisted situation involved.

So all in all, I would recommend this one, if you don't expect too much out of it, it will be OK. Somehow of a "Grave encounters", maybe better, dunno exactly. Anyway, if you do go in for it, enjoy!

Cheers!

A young couple embark on a road trip to an abandoned hospital with the man filming everything along the way. The woman is a painter and the idea is to scope out the hospital to hold an art show there at a later time.

When their car is towed, they call a couple of friends to pick them up, but plans change and they all re-enter the building. This is when bad things start happening as supernatural forces begin to manifest.

The characters are so annoying and their decisions either do not make sense or just plain drive you crazy. Too little happens too late and what does happen is not very interesting. If there were more supernatural goings on and the characters were more likable I think I would have enjoyed this a lot more.

I'm not even half way through this flaming pile of garbage filler and I'm done. The bf, who stays behind the camera and delivers half the lines in the movie, is above and beyond annoying and his girly little prepubic voice is like nails on a chalkboard.

The gf is an airhead, cute but dumb as a box of rocks. I have no idea what stupidity is left in this movie but I'm sure it's not worth commenting on. I'll just be waiting and rooting for these two and anyone else in sure that pops up to die. If only this was a snuff film and it was for real.

So my girlfriend and I decided to give this one a shot because we are fans of found footage horror movies and really liked the Grave Encounters movies. We didn't expect too much from this movie, and that's about what we got. To sum up sxtape quickly, just imagine Grave Encounters...now remove all the parts where stuff actually happens, and you have this movie. Firstly, having only 2 characters for the bulk of the film really limits what can happen, especially when the story and dialog are as horrendous as they are here. The characters are not developed whatsoever and I feel like they act in completely random ways during the events of the movie and I don't get any kind of definition as to their character or personalities. The setting itself is great, but highly underutilized. Once again, we have yet another movie in an abandoned place where the director expects the location to carry the movie and make it "creepy" and "unsettling" by default without adding further elements to conjure those moods. So, we're left with a movie that mainly involves two people walking around in an asylum (that was performing lobotomies in 1982 apparently! to hell with sense. oh and the water and power still works. suuuure) and talking about random stuff (sometimes sex, sometimes "this is weird we should leave...but let's stay for some reason"). I didn't get the feeling that there was anything beyond a very loose story arc for this movie (there is going to be a boring intro, a "creepy" overly drawn out mid section, and a brief & very predictable climax). There was some stuff that happened, but there was no particular purpose behind any of it and none lead to any significant developments. One huge flaw I found with the movie is that any time a scene starts to pick up - you hear something in the distance, ominous music starts to play, some ghostly voices echo in the background, the cameraman starts to run...OK this is about to get good...and then, bizarrely, the camera shuts off and comes back on a second later in a different location where nothing is happening and nothing became of whatever situation was about to go down. This completely kills the mood. I have no idea why this "technique" was used over and over throughout the film but it made it a chore to sit through, since any time you think something is about to happen you are jarringly let down. I think there is also a plot about ghosts or something, but it is never fleshed out, nor does it have much bearing on anything that happens other than to provide a boo scare or two.

Ultimately, this is just a bland attempt to follow in the footsteps of movies like Grave Encounters. Not the worst thing ever, though not particularly worth watching unless you absolutely must see every found footage horror movie out there.

A huge trend in low-budget films over the last few years have been the so-called 'found footage' movies. In other words, the participants in some horrible massacre, ghostly apparitions or alien invasion supposedly used a home video camera and the film you see is that actual footage. In the case of The Blair Witch Project, a tiny indie brought in many, many millions of dollars. However, by now, 15 years later, the idea no longer seems very innovative…in fact, it's become a bit of a cliché. While some newer found footage films manage to overcome this and still entertain (such as "Alien Abduction"), a lot of it is just crap…and "sxtape" is just crap.

There are two huge problems with this film. First, despite the title, there isn't that much skin in this film. Instead, they talk about sex a lot and when the characters supposedly are having sex, you don't see anything. So, for someone just wanting a cheap thrill, there just aren't very many. Second, and this is by far the biggest problem, the characters are utterly hateful and I was annoyed every second they were in the film. And, considering they are in just about every frame, it made watching this movie a real chore.

Adam is supposedly filming everything in this, so all you get from him is his voice. He's a weak-willed guy who seems to do whatever his nutty girlfriend, Jill, suggests. She is a super-annoying young lady who seems completely absorbed by herself. The dialog between them is among the worst I can recall in a film—and they have zero depth to their relationship. They just cuss, talk about sex and she does whatever she feels like doing—exposing herself to others, shoplifting or breaking into an old abandoned hospital. And, the hospital break-in consists of most of the film. Jill and Adam decide to sneak into the place and make a sex tape. However, mostly they just rummage through the old building where it appears as if no one has been there in decades—yet, inexplicably, the lights still sometimes work and the water is also working (huh?!). Later, after one foray into this creepy place, they bring a couple equally annoying friends and they run amok in this place. There isn't a lot of suspense, however, as when the film began, you learned about their fate.

The bottom line is that having ANYONE occupy this much footage on a found footage style film is tough because the viewer will most likely tire of their antics. But, when you make the people THIS annoying and banal, then it's practically impossible to enjoy the film or recommend it to anyone. Overall, it's a film lacking originality and horror that is instead just a horror to try to watch.