I'll tell you why I love Found Footage (FF) horrors over the normal horrors. First, in a normal horror film (like conjuring etc), you basically are an audience to whatever happens in the film. However, in a FF horror, you feel you are actually with the team ( or rather I would say you are in that situation) experiencing the horrors which makes it more realistic. Second, though horrors are imaginary stuff, FF styled horrors tend to meet imagination with realism. FF horrors are not for everyone. The shaky camera work might not impress all but I personally find it very realistic as you feel you are actually watching some real life footages rather than a film shot on sets. If you are new to FF horror, remember that shaky camera work is a characteristic and that the horror doesn't kick in immediately.
Now coming to this film, Bollywood till date has made many horror films but has rarely ventured into this area of horror, the FF horror. Horror is almost dead in bollywood and makers are trying to revive it every year by following the same old path of those 3rd person veiw horrors (like raaz, 1920 etc). Noone till date has tried to make a new FF horror which i feel is a genuinely interesting way of presenting a horror film.
QUESTION MARK tries to imitate the cult FF horror "Blair witch project " and it succeeds to a great extent. It follows the conventional FF horror path --> the first 35 mins are spent just showing what the group is doing and the remaining part involves the beginning of the sinister activities in the bungalow and as the film reaches the climax, things tend to become ugly.
Just like blair witch project, this film too has no visible ghosts so it heavily relies on creepy sounds and loud jumpscare noises to scare you. It works well! The tension that builds up to the jumpscares are good. Camera work towards the end gets super shaky but then it's OK, it's a characteristic of FF films to depict the person holding the camera is freaking out. Mind you , in a FF horror, you would always find the camera man with camera on no matter what happens and it is a characteristic. Overall, this film scores pretty well in the tension build up and horror sections.
What I didn't like is --> 1. It tends to drag towards the end. The editing of this film is not very crisp. Even at just 82 mins, I started telling " ok we had enough, now stop!" but no, it takes its own sweet time to end. 2. There is a a possession scene. Many might find it scary, many might find it hilarious. I found it to be the latter. It's way too overdone! 3. Night vision camera being used inside the bungalow at night I mean cmon , there are lights in that house, why don't you use them? Just to show it's night time, the camera man uses night vision even inside the bungalow.
Overall, I would say this a good attempt by Bollywood in the FF horror category although there are many foreign FF horrors that are much better than this (like Grave Encounters, BLAIRwitch project, REC, Hell House etc). As I said, very few, maybe 3-5 films have been made in thus category in Bollywood and I would love to see more . But then FF horrors really need good makers , I mean, really talented ones as FF horrors can go horribly wrong and cringy if not treated well. Thankfully, QUESTION MARK is not one of them.
