The Cottage

A film so bad even with it's 47 minute run time it managed to put stay it's welcome. It's boring, and painfully amateur from the acting, to the film quality itself. You can even see the camera shake at times. Nothing much happens.

It gets weirdly religious too, with a lot of prayers, and prayer circles. The end was so amusing it could have been from a horror comedy, but I can't tell if it was meant to be like that or not?

Overall its boring and adds absolutely nothing new to the horror genre. So much, that it's actually difficult to get the word count up on this to leave a review. It really was that dull.

Five friends go to a cabin... how many times have horror movies started out like this before? Okay, so this time it's technically a 'cottage,' but I really don't think that makes much of a difference.

First of all this has to be one of the shortest films I've seen in a long time. Rather than being close to ninety minutes, it's not even close to an hour long - clocking in at about forty-nine minutes.

Therefore, there's not an awful lot to say about a film that's so short. We get a whistlestop tour of the characters and - believe it or not - they're not bad actors and the dialogue they share is actually reasonably believable. Then, before you know it, there's supernatural events going down and it's all over.

Sadly, if there's one word you need to know about this film it's 'budget.' Or lack thereof, I should say. Just because a film doesn't have a lot of money behind it doesn't mean it's going to be bad. Take this one - the actors are just fine, as are their performances. But it is technically a 'horror' film and with something in that genre, you're going to need at least a little bit of cash put by for a scare or two.

So, here the film-makers use every trick in the book to avoid actually showing anything that might involve spending money. Even the sound effects and demonic voices are only played when an actor is facing the other way - I guess that saves on matching up an actor's mouth to the dubbed dialogue.

This could have been a student film for it's overall look, feel, cast and lack of budget. If you're looking for a great film called 'The Cottage' then there's an Andy Serkis film of the same name released back in 2008. It's wonderfully black comedy and it didn't have much of a budget either, but it's a million times better than this one.

What transpires over the course of a literal 1 minute and 32 seconds prompted me to pause and come over to IMDb to read about what I was getting myself into before going any further.... This is all in one shot, one take, in real time...

1. (0:02:50) Almost 3 minutes in, a friend arrives to "get ready" at this girl's place where all of the friends are coming to meet up. He makes an immediate bee line to a back room...

2. (0:03:12) About 20 seconds later three other friends arrive with two coolers and bags and all immediately take seats on a couch...

3. (0:03:45) A friend asks where the first guy is and another friend who arrived WITH HER just seconds ago answers that "He's still in the bathroom." How would he know that?

4. (0:03:55) The friend in question says he's still getting dolled up to the annoyance of the girl who lives there. The dude has only been there for all of 1 whole minute.

5. (0:04:12) He finally ascends from the back looking EXACTLY as he did 75 seconds ago when he arrived and the girl fumes "Oh about time." as if they had been waiting on him for a lot longer than the 75 seconds she has and the 27 seconds it was for everyone else.

6. (0:04:22) Then the girl says they should go and pack up the car... Why did her friends even bring those coolers and bags into her place to begin with? Wouldn't it have been easier to just unload from one car to another?

Now that may all sound nit-picky but seeing it might be indicative of the remaining 44 minutes I think I'll just bow out here. Which is also why I didn't include an actual rating as it'd be unfair to rate a film I hadn't actually watched enough of to really judge properly.

I had zero idea, of what the heck this is. Plus it had 5 characters (hence the 5), or at least I think so. Great comedy, assuming that was the idea. Or what ever. This doesn't contain spoilers because I was so confused. A group of 5 which turn to 4, until number 5 shows up again 25 minutes later, except that it was night time two or was three times in between. I am not kidding., The group included an high school exorcist, who did nothing but tell someone else to do something. I don't remember having this much fun with such as mess of "horror" movie. If someone decides to review this movie, let me know, I need help. LOL.