pagemaster7

The first half on the film is pretty good, at least compared to the rest. I found the acting sub par in its entirety, but the first half did have a nice bit of tension. That all falls apart as the second half goes stupid, then doubles down on stupid again. I have a love hate relationship with Shyamalan, on occasion his hits are incredibly good to great, unfortunately his misses are just as big, and he has more of the misses, and this definitely is one. Not his worst film, but it's definitely it's in the worst's categories neighborhood. His films just try to hard to generate a twist, while it has worked brilliantly at times but it's so frustrating when it fails, which is more often than not. In the end with trap we are left with sub par acting and a story that picks up speed as it goes on straight to the dumpster.

Being a horror fan I really liked the first v/h/s. Yes it was low budget but fresh and original, using its low budget to add rather than subtract. The second was equally good if not better. Then the series went downhill quickly with the following entries getting much worse. This entry returns to form with fresh stories, and an improvement in writing and acting. Like any anthology there will be hit and miss stories depending on your liking. All of this being said they are still low budget films and should be judged accordingly, holding it to the same standard as movies with eight figure budgets isn't apple to apples. I will say they accounted for the very dollar and I'm surprised they were able to do so much with it. Keep in mind this is really for horror fans only there isn't much crossover here, it's visceral, incredibly gory, and it's of course a found footage film. For horror fans definitely recommend.

This could have been really good which is disappointing, because we are left with something downgraded to simply watchable. Having read the book and seen the original film it's definitely different, same basic story but strips everything subtle and creepy, and just doesn't have any build. It zips through scene to scene like a cliff notes version. The biggest distraction is the direction, every scene changes the point of view shot so many times it draws you out of the film, every conversation seems to be a close up shot switching from person to person as they talk. The other point is everything feels rushed, like you're just hurrying to the next scene. The good points is the underlying story is still good, the acting is not bad at all, and it does have good horror scenes, it's just nothing seems to fit together. Overall still worth a watch if your in the mood, it's at least not boring.