Reviews

I find myself perplexed at the love this movie gets. I enjoy a good slow burn movie, but this isn't slow burn, it's egregious padded. The plot isn't very complex, yet we spend 45 minutes going over the same points and dragging out every new development by having all the characters weigh in, even though they have nothing interested to add.

By the time the movie actually got to the real found footage part, I was just ready for it to be over. Other documentary style found footage movies manage to intersperse the actual footage much more effectively. Savageland did a much better job telling a story with just pictures than Horror in the High Desert. I'm not disappointed, I'm annoyed that recommendations from Reddit let me down yet again.

I'm genuinely baffled by the love this movie gets. The acting is bad, the writing is atrocious, and the plot is barely existent. The set up was interesting but once the "horror" starts, it gets boring really fast. There's very little tension or scares here, just people running around and dying.

The titular Pumpkinhead looks too much like a Xenomorph and left me yearning for the tension of Alien. While the puppeteering and effects for it are good, they commit the cardinal sin of showing PH way too often and too clearly for him to remain scary for more than 5 minutes.

Lance Henriksen's performance and the anit-revenge narrative keep this from being entirely unwatchable but I do no understand how this stood out from the glut of similar movies from the 80's.

This movie probably plays a lot better to casual fans of horror, but, for more seasoned viewers, nothing here is original or done as well as the movie they're borrowing from. While Sosie Bacon's performance anchors the whole film, the poor writing sees it all go to waste and not have the same impact as, for example, Essie Davis' performance in The Babadook. The poor writing stands out the most as any subtly and nuance is obliterated by characters directly stating the movie's themes, which were fairly obvious from the opening scene.

The film does have some solid jump scares and, at times, threatens to be tense and engaging, but huge sections feel like filler. It Follows does a much better job in creating a feeling that the monster is always after you and you can never relax, whereas Smile's creature shows up every now and again to remind us that this is a horror movie.

And then there's the demon voice. Any chance that I may have found this movie scary evaporated when the creature spoke using the corniest, most generic vocal effects. My wife and I both burst out laughing the instant we heard the voice and that was that for taking the movie any sort of seriously.

Smile is not necessarily a bad movie, but it fails to improve upon any of the ideas they borrow from other films and left me wishing I was watching one of them instead.

This movie is missing anything in the realm of plot or character development or scares or anything of any substance. The horror is your standard found footage set up and the humor boils down to the hotel manager rambling incoherently. The biggest shock is that said hotel manager is actually pretty funny. I would much rather have a movie just of him than what we got.

But boy is it close. The people who made this seem to not grasp basic concepts of film making. Tons of shaky cams, people talking just out of the shot, poorly times camera cuts, and a ton of bad acting.

The last 7 hours of this movie is mostly our lead actress screaming and I assume she was doing so because she was forced to watch the bits of this they'd already filmed.

It opens with the director dreaming about the house, inspiring him to make the movie, which I assume is what happened in real life. It's only 65 minutes but it feels like an eternity.

Do not believe the fake reviews.

Nothing outright sucks about this movie, but it doesn't really do much interesting. It's not bad, but some of these reviews are truly perplexing.

If you are a found footage fan, an interesting premise and real world link are worth a single watch, but wouldn't be the end of the world if you missed it.

There are very few movies that I think are actually deserving of a single star, but this one earns it without question. It is actually so bad that it made me question some of the other 1 star ratings I've handed out in the past. I know it's hyperbolic and people say this about tons of movies, but this may be the worst movie I've ever seen.

Everything about this movie is awful. The early scenes aren't properly mic'd and we get tons of background noise polluting the scenes. There are frequent camera effects that make it impossible to see what's actually going on in the movie. The budget for effects is essentially nonexistent. The adlibbed dialogue is atrocious to the point where the actors mess up and then just say what they meant and it gets left in for some reason.

The fact that this is labeled as a horror movie is a travesty in of itself. The only horror I felt watching this is when my app crashed and it started the movie over from the beginning. Other than that, the "horror" comes from clunky exposition, blurred out visuals, and people saying "I think I saw something." Spirit in the Woods has the classic problem of telling rather than showing. The characters constantly state their fear and anxiety, yet we're never shown a reason as to why that is. The group manages to freak themselves out within 5 minutes of arriving at the woods, despite there being absolutely no reason to be scared. The ending horror sequence features off screen deaths, random screaming, random running, bloody shirts, and obligatory possessions. The thin lore isn't explained or expanded on at any point to give the ending any semblance of meaning.

I watch a lot of found footage movies, so I generally know what I'm in for with the cast of characters that are bound to show up. Here we have the smart girl, stand in for the audience guy, athlete, prissy girl, and friend the no one likes. Usually the friend the no one likes is the most obnoxious character, but this movie does break from tradition by making Kinsley, the smart girl, the worst character. While the other 4 struggle to leave any sort of impression, Kinsley dominates this movie with CONSTANT whining and complaining. By the midway point of the movie, her voice was beginning to make me want to die in the woods somewhere. Also, she's posed as the smart member of the group, as we're so often told, but her behavior and dialogue make her come across as a dimwit and the dumbest of the bunch. She seems baffled, confused, and terrified by literally everything that happens in the movie. I guess it's good at least someone was scared.

I found out on here that this movie was Kickstarted, which would infuriate me if I put money into this. I understand that this movie had next to no budget, but that's no excuse for the complete lack of effort and thought put into this movie. I have seen some people defend this movie by saying "oh, at least they made it" and "they did the best with what they had," but I don't buy it at all. Nigel Bach managed to spit out a way better movie in Bad Ben for $300 and the budget for Spirit in the Woods was FIVE TIMES more than that. This movie was had an incredibly weak premise, no money, and no talent on screen. I get making a cheap movie to see what you can do with it, but when you have literally nothing positive going for you, maybe don't make the movie.

Also, what kind of high school class project is going out and filming yourself picking up rocks and leaves? I would have loved to have seen that syllabus.

In the end, this movie is terrible on every level and fails to even suck in a fun way. The fact that it even exists on major streaming services perplexes me. DO NOT WATCH.

This movie is pure trash and never tries to be anything different. Bad jokes, gratuitous nudity, dumb wrestle fights, and over the top gore. WrestleMassacre is exactly what I was looking for.

Not a lot to say here because there's not a lot of movie in this movie. I was hoping for some trashy fun but this movie didn't even deliver much on that.

Don't Watch in Your Life.

The first bit of this movie is blog footage and is really uninteresting. Once we get to the apartment, the movie picks up and has some solid spooky moments and the lead actress has some chops. The plot arc is your standard fare, serviceable, but unspectacular.

Stay does rely heavily on jump scares, but they are handled better than many movies like this.

Overall, a decent, low budget, Paranormal Activity knock off.

I watch a lot of these found footage movies and I can appreciate the slow burn style, but this movie takes it to an extreme. It feels like they got to the end of the movie and realized they forgot to put in anything scary, so they hit us with a series of the same, lazy jump scares. The first jump scare in the beginning of the movie totally got me, but my immediate concern was "is this all this movie is gonna have?" Sadly, it was.

Nothing is horrible about it, which may have actually made it interesting. Hard pass on this one.

This movie was pretty lifeless. At every point, it seemed like it was just going through the motions, hitting all the found footage cliches.

Also for some reason, I was anticipating the house to be....more than it was. For a house where it's important that it has a long history, it seemed like a normal modern house.

This most frustrating part of this movie is that the location is actually pretty creepy. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie is plagued with bad acting and annoying characters. The movie has a few creepy moments, but is overall forgettable.

DEAR FOUND FOOTAGE MOVIES, YOUR DIRECTOR CHARACTER DOES NOT ALWAYS HAVE TO BE AN OBSESSED JERK.

It's ok to make a movie with characters that are likeable.

This movie holds it together just enough to eke out a second star and nothing more. Not scary, not funny, not much of anything. Plus the final girl is such a stick in the mud that you end up rooting for the ghost.

I'm not sure if this was just less garbage than I thought or I'm so tired I hallucinated the whole thing, but it was surprisingly watchable.

This movie has an interesting enough premise that has some potential. Unfortunately, that's where the positives end. Sleepaway Slashers falls apart quickly due to poor writing, bad acting, annoying characters, and a silly plot. I cannot think of a single performance of note or a character I was actually rooting for. There were a few moments of practical effects that were decent but they were brief and far between. By the end of this thing, you will wish you were on fire as well.

Bad Ben has a ton of problems and isn't creative in it's plot.....but it does have a ton of charm to it. Knowing that the movie was made for next to nothing and completely done by one guy makes it pretty impressive. That's also what makes this movie fun. Nigel Bach as Tom Riley is a breath of fresh air in these found footage movies. When I first saw that this movie was going to be about a dumpy, middle aged man, I was concerned. I shouldn't have been. Bach has a ton of charisma and has great comedic delivery. Tom Riley comes off as very relatable, with completely reasonable and understandable motivations. I wouldn't call this an all time classic, but it is a charming movie that deserves it's cult following.

I don't know what I expected this movie to be, but whatever I thought, this was not it. It's not really scar, but it did have a few solid laughs. Overall the movie is interesting in how it deals with our ever growing relationship with social media and kept me engaged the entire time. I still can't tell if the movie is silly for all it's twists or brilliant. Either way, totally worth a watch.

The reviews for this movie, and to a lesser extent the first one, have always confused me. Neither movie is bad by any stretch of the imagination, but I don't find either to be anything special either. The stories, characters, and a majority of the scares are pretty standard horror movie fare and do little to conjure (I'm sorry I had to do this) any scares from me. The Conjuring 2 is well put together from a technical sense and the acting performances are serviceable for the horror genre but so much of the content is an old hat for horror veterans. There are a couple of solid scares but most of the rest are predictable and fall flat. I appreciate that the Conjuring series has brought a lot of new eyes to the world of horror movies, but I fear that they just aren't for me.

This has to be the single most nothing movie I have ever seen. This movie fails to do anything in a passable way. It fails to even be bad in a fun way. The Amityville Haunting is the worst Asylum movie ever and that is quite an achievement. Some found footage movies should stay lost.