Vdova

This is a good movie that is deeply wounded by terrible dubbing. It would've been much better off subtitled. The dubbing alters the mood and turns what, no doubt, is a creepy movie oozing atmosphere into a much lighter adventure. For example a minor role of a young boy sounds like a cartoon mouse and there are instances of laughing or other non-word utterances like oohs and ahs that sound on!y cartoony. But it's not just these instances but the entire dialogue that is ruined. It comes off sounding more like an episode of Scooby Doo and less like the tense and atmospheric folk horror that is is.

A subtitled version of this movie would gain at least a star and possibly two but as it stands now its a real stretch to give it the six I did. I do think it's potentially a great little movie and I tried hard to ignore the laughable dubbing when rating it.

Firstly: I hate Blair Witch copies, and pretty much anything depending on shaking handheld cameras.

The first 15 minutes or so was therefore quite challenging.

The Movie is not the gore/slasher/evil type of horror, it is simply creepy. The buildup, the characters, the atmosphere: great!

I do believe this movie is under-rated, 3.9? I give it an easy 7.

In fact, it is probably better but I started of expecting crap and the first section lived up to the expectation.

On the second viewing, the annoyance was gone, and the creep factor was pure entertainment. My spawn got all wrapped up and ranted in monologues about how things are not supposed to be like that! Fun, fun, Fun!

Well, I was able to finish it. That's as much praise as I'll give this derivative mess.

I was forced to watch it dubbed, as AmazonPrime only had dubbed version. The dubbing was anime-quality, absolutely atrocious.

The story itself took much longer to get to its central hook than I expected, and once it did get there, it proceeded to do very little. Pretty much almost nothing actually happened apart from the finding of the old woman naked in the woods, Zoya. It's from her repeated ramblings that we pretty much get all the real exposition.

Beyond that, nothing that actually happened seemed in any way connected to the "The Widow" concept at all. We barely even see much of anything beyond some musical stings, people acting strangely, and eyes going black.

The image on the poster is essentially a lie, as nothing appears in the film that looks like that. This whole thing has elements of The Blair Witch Project, but with somehow even less actual stuff going on.

Very much Blair Witch-ish, with some of the worst English fubbing I've ever heard. Much better to watch it in Russian with English subs.