Dagr

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.

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.

Based on some really positive reviews, I watched this movie with the hope of finding a nice little horror gem. I was sadly disappointed.

As is typical of most (mediocre) horror, the film spends about 30 minutes in the preamble, but does very little to establish the setting or characters beyond some pretty standard tropes. Given the overall short runtime, I was floored that they spent nearly half the movie's screen time on inane establishing dialogue and nothing-burger scenes. Not even really much to foreshadow or set a creepy tone--just minute after minute of yawn-inducing banter.

Even the "scary" bits were completely tired, run-of-the-mill fodder like eerie whispers and doors closing. Nothing you haven't seen in dozens of other horror films. And that's pretty much the entire movie: rehashed, regurgitated horror tropes with very little novelty or innovation.

Don't believe the hype. This movie is middling dreck at best, and not worth your money if you're at all picky about your horror films.

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.