Dagr

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.

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.

I saw this title advertised and came here to check it out. It had like a 6 yesterday. So I got it and watched it. I don't understand where in the world they got the 6 from. Now it's a 4.9. And it had over 1k yesterday. Anyway, if it looks too good to be true it probably is...

So yeah. This has got to be one of the seemingly lowest budget films I've seen in a while. They like rented a mediocre, cheap villa in the English countryside, probably on Airbnb. And they rented 3 cars. And probably advertised on Craigslist for 2 main and 4 supporting actors... or wherever it is you get actors 'off the street' these days. I think the whole thing was shot like over a weekend. Less than a week, tops. They could have believably shot the whole thing in one day, like one of Willis' recent movies.

They went for a documentary style, of sorts, and probably really did use phones for the majority of the footage. I mean the premise was sort of interesting, and probably could have gone somewhere... but the whole thing was just like a high school movie final project that got a b-. That's the overall vibe I got from it. The main characters were annoying as hell. So they are famous social media performers/influencers who steal? Do you know how easy it would be for the police to get them? I'm not going to even... yeah.

The monster in the movie, I've seen middle-schoolers' Halloween costumes that put more effort into the concept and execution than this. And he kept repeating the same chant over and over again. Except it wasn't even chant-y sounding, or creepy in any way. It was like a guy repeating my take out order over the phone. I know what they were going for, but in this case, it was not scary or effective at all. It just became extremely annoying and ridiculous after the first encounter.

Ok, enough, like I said, I only watched this because I saw it had a 6 and read some of the obviously fake reviews. So I was waiting for it to get good, and by the time I lost all hope and realized it was fake I was more than halfway through so I just finished it. Ugh.

I fell for the hype.

I rented Dagr on YouTube and I am very disappointed. This is such a bog standard found footage film it feels like I've already seen it!

How any filmmakers can produce something this generic is beyond me.

And well, if you're going to copy something copy something good at least. Maybe even try putting a new spin on it.

This is just lazy film making. I get it's ultra low budget but don't then try getting us to believe it's on a Blair Witch level of creativity. It's not. Far from it.

The acting is terrible. Yep I get the YouTubers are probably supposed to be annoying but the whole thing just feels like a joke.

There's no actual tension. Not even a decent jump scare to give us something to feel.

There's so many better movies about strange cults. Watch one of them instead.

Even though it's not amazing itself if you want to watch a modern take on British cults this year then try Lord of Misrule. Again it's not amazing but it's far better than this.

I like this genre: found footage horror with a dose of self awareness. But, the lead in is WAAAAYYYYY too long and it definitely doesn't need to be given how little info you actually need to understand for the film premise to make sense. Seemed like they were trying to kill time in order to make it a full feature. There are so. Many. Driving. Shots. Also a lot of talking to random farm animals that they encounter. In general I feel like the two main actors (the thieving girls) are meant to be cute-bubbly sorts but they are also a bit annoying, think Kitty and Lydia from Pride and Prejudice 2005. I think this is mostly the case though because there is so much filler so they are talking and exclaiming a lot but it's very unfocussed/doesn't need to be in the film. That being said, still giving 5 stars because it does get some good creepy bits in and there are some interesting story points in the second half of the film. But you can pretty much read the synopsis and skip the first half of the film without missing a beat.