NIGHTSHOT begins its opening credits by telling us
"The video presented here has not undergone any post-production processing, it's the original footage/no cuts and no editing".
However, at almost the very end of the movie there appears to be a subtle CGI effect? Be that as it may, taking the claim at face value, this movie is a pretty impressive achievement.
In a single take in the form of found footage, it tells the story of a team of two urbex documentarians filming for a show called "Nightshot" who enter an old sanatorium which served as a prison in world war 2 and later was rumored to have a doctor who carried out certain kinds of deadly experiments. As the the two explore the building, they get caught up in increasingly unsettling and eventually horrifying events.
The setting lends itself very well for the kind of dark, doom-filled atmosphere that the movie aims for, and the black and white videography, only briefly switched to color during the movie to show a floor covered in blood, certainly enhances this.
Since we never actually see the cameraman (played by the director), the movie rests squarely on the shoulders of the main actress, and she does a good job of transforming from carefree if not slightly annoyed to a mortally terrified in the space of the take.
Although I was at no point bored watching this, it still felt like an overlong short movie. I think the reason is that story-wise, it is pretty thin. The film has a mild twist about midway, which, however, is very predictable. Beyond that, it really does not offer anything that enriches the story. The movie relies mainly on atmosphere, creepy moments and a few jump scares to entertain, and for the most part it actually succeeds.
However, once it gets to the ending, it unfortunately falls flat. I think there are two separate problems with how it ends:
First, I believe that for this type of movie to have a satisfying ending, it needs to a) wrap up loose elements from earlier in the movie and b) do so in an unexpected manner.
NIGHTSHOT fulfilled condition a) but not b). There were ample hints throughout that the movie was going to end this way, so it would have been more satisfying to subvert audience expectations and come up with a surprise.
Second, if a movie goes for a shock ending, it really needs to shock, and the ending, as staged, just does not have that effect.
In fact, the penultimate scene unintentionally reminds us that we are watching a movie because it inadvertently highlights the limitations of the one-take approach, and the very last scene seems positively silly.
It is really a pity, because NIGHTSHOT itself suggests one kind of shock ending which would have been better than the actual one: during their explorations, the team come upon a strongly disturbing photograph of a dismembered woman. Having the cameraman lose track of the protagonist and then discover, say, a "re-staging" of the photograph would have been far more shocking than how it actually ends.
Despite the shortcoming, for the decent execution of the unusual concept, it is worth a watch.
