THE LAND OF BLUE LAKES already sounds suspiciously like a slogan to advertise a tourist destination, and sure enough, this is basically a vacation video except for the last few minutes.
A group of young Latvians go on an outdoors trip and end up disappearing. The video suggests a connection to the ancient pagan history of the area.
The one innovation in this found footage movie is that much of the footage is shot from kayaks. It looks nice, but it is not enough to sustain a movie, much less a horror film.
Nothing much happens, and even when the group encounters difficulties, they are of the banal kind. Nobody even falls off, and there is no sense of danger or doom. The exposition of the local legend is unbelievably bland and also does little to illuminate the ending.
Past the half hour mark, there is a mildly unsettling scene, but because we have no idea what it means, it is ineffective.
Several times it happens that one moment they are deep in the woods, then the next they are by some buildings, jarring the audience out of the illusion that they are deeply immersed in nature. But even then, they encounter no people that could have helped build atmosphere and context.
The ending has to be one of the worst in any kind of horror film: not only do we remain in the dark about exactly why there is a threat, who it is and what it wants, but in the final scene, where one person is chasing another, it is entirely unclear who dispatches whom. Having watched literally thousands of horror films, I can say this is a first!
I did not think this incompetent level of storytelling was possible. This is really bad, unless you enjoy kayaking footage.
