Dagr

When two internet pranksters arrive to disrupt a photo-shoot, something evil decides to call it a wrap.

Just about the lowest rating I've given a movie.

A few references to film school and the profession suggest the makers are well aware of their craft, and there does seem to be an enormous number of cameras in play, but nothing is done with care or intelligence. As for the writing, it takes 30 minutes to dole out information that could have been injected through high-tempo montage. But then a literally in-your-face tribute to Blair Witch - followed by the fatigue of realizing that nobody in this production understood anything about that found-footage classic and its unifying concept. Instead, it delivers frights at the same level as one of those daft ghost-hunter TV shows - but without the shadows.

When presented with a spectacularly bad argument, scientists have a cutting put down: "not even wrong". This is the film version of that argument.

An extra point for the one glimmer of charm, the actor playing Thea, whose surname I'd like to pronounce nice and proper.

Wow...this is one of the worst movies I've seen this year so far. They jabber on and make YouTube content for F O R T Y straight minutes. I'm not sure why I continued to watch past thirty minutes but I did.

I truly regret not turning it off then.

At 41 minutes the movies tries and fails to get interesting.

At 45 minutes in...we turned it off. It was THAT bad.

It's so bad that I felt obligated to write a review to save anyone else contemplating watching this.

Do not waste your time on this folks.

I repeat. DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME ON THIS MOVIE.

And if you do, don't pretend you weren't warned.

Saw the 4.7 and thought ok lets try it.

It was almost too painful to watch and I had to resort to the fast forward button. The action, if you can call it that doesn't start until 3/4 of the way into the film.

Whilst realising this is meant to be from the perspective of a youtubers camera I have to say I think my primary school age daughter could have done better.

In short its a painfully long drawn out build up to what amounts to a half cooked attempt at supernatural horror.

Make sure you bring lots of energy drink because you need it to prevent yourself from falling asleep.

Bring a pot of paint too and hit the walls with it. You might find the paint drying is more fun to watch.

Trying to carry out a new prank, a pair of women on a massively popular prank channel decide to crash a commercial shoot in the countryside that looks abandoned, but when they go through the recovered footage from the shoot discover there's a deadly evil summoned to kill them and is now after them.

This was a decent enough effort if only let down by a few major factors. What works nicely here is the manner in which the reveal of what's haunting the house comes to be, which is quite effective and chilling. The occult rituals that were said to take place here with the past occupants of the house finding themselves battling this supernatural force only for the new girls to come across the same thing when they arrive makes for a fun time here. The encounters in the house that take place in the second half, where they not only face the robed figure but also see the influence of its actions on the film crew they thought they were interacting with makes for fun time as the use of a creepy location and chilling action makes for a frenetic and thrilling time. The main problem here is the exhausting and draining build-up to get there as this one really takes its toll getting to this point. Focusing on some of the vapidest and irritating social media personalities who are no more righteous than the people they claim to be committing these against makes for a tough time really caring about what's going on. That comes off even worse when they're positioned as the moral center of what's going on as the antics are said to be so popular, but given that hardly anything interesting is happening either with them or the other film crew on location before they arrive leaves this with little explanation or purpose and drains this one overall.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Language and Violence.

Despite its short runtime, "Dagr" manages to bore the viewers within a short timespan. As a matter of fact, you have to sit through more than half the film before some attempts at horror tropes appear. This is just one of the more tangible evidences of Matthew Butler-Hart's struggles with the writing and direction of "Dagr". Whatever his point with this film was (I'm sure he had one) is not displayed even at the slightest. Some sort of social commentary? Who knows? When the folk horror themes is unraveled at the end, no answers are given anyways due to its convolution. And yes, we've seen the found-footage-within-a-found-footage horror movie trick before.