Caught the film trailer awhile back for this found footage horror, and it actually looked decent. Now it was on my radar. So when it came to watching it, the excitement nosedived, I had mostly seen the best moments already. "SPECTER" had an interesting set-up of sorts, builds nicely, performances are fine, but once the chaos begins. The staggered, clichéd execution shows it up, by not going anywhere with its slim concept, keeping us, just like the protagonists in the dark (literally) of what's going on. When it came to the abrupt ending (auto power off), I was at a lost.
What starts of like a small coastal town (on location Santa Cruz) threatened by a tsunami caused from an earthquake in the Pacific Ocean, leads too many unexplainable events and an entire town disappearing overnight. So what looks like being a natural phenomenon (storms, earthquakes, floods, fire), could be something supernatural at work. Yet these one-dimensional teens (one with his brand new camcorder) who are experiencing these weird occurrences have also taken an unknown substance, which kind blurs a line between what's real and what's not.
That's the hindering aspect, because by the end, it feels like a bad trip. Even the camera footage is experiencing the shakes, distortion, where it never really distinguishes the illusions, or threat. We see dark tall faceless figures standing side by side, and then disappearing; glowing eyes in the dark, loud, or strange noises from unseen forces, bright lights in the sky, unusual phone calls, technology interference, people acting strange and turning up dead. And when it came to those instances, the fuzzy camera footage reared its ugly head. It becomes a frenetic jumble of heedless ideas and random images amongst constant wandering. Like a total freak-out, getting stranger as it goes along, but providing only confusion, and a few spine-tingling moments at the backend.
Before the chaos erupts though, in the lead up you get a sense of the upcoming disasters (spliced stock footage) and some little things along the way that look odd. This does point more towards something out-of-this-world contributing, since this guy rarely puts down his camera, but you can't pass up the drug related angle. In how they presented the hallucinations, they could've executed it better to set these dilemmas apart. I noticed when the credits rolled at the end (outside of Jordan Graham being credited a lot) it had a website link for more info, ugh, and it doesn't work either
