Area 407

Before watching this movie I read several reviews and was so disheartened by them that I was ready to burn the DVD and forget about it, but then, remembering past similar experiences decided against burning the CD (pollution) and to give it a try.

I started watching the film with great apprehension, specially after hearing the squeaky, high pitch, unbearable voice of the blonde girl, but breathing deeply I kept firmly in my decision to see this movie.

I was quite surprised to find it not bad at all! specially the first part, until the plane crash. From then on, this gimmick with the hand held camera as the only visual support for the story was a bit too much, and later on, almost oppressive and tiresome to a screaming point (my nerves!).

I'm sorry the monster didn't kill the blond teenager at the very beginning of the movie, because she was really unbearable. The fat passenger was a very good actor, because he really was that kind of character that you want to strangle with your bare hands, and he kept it up for the whole length of the movie.

The airline hostess was another lovable character, and a very good actress, since she really gave the impression that catering to airplane passengers was her daily métier.

I found two unpardonable faults with this film: The hand held camera as the only camera to shoot the whole movie and the very last scene, where we get to see (fortunately very briefly) something that should have never been shown. When will they learn (the makers of thrillers) that showing "the thing" is always a let down for the believability of the story?

That's why in "Rebecca" (Alfred Hitchcock - 1940) Rebecca never appears, not even for a moment, not even as a shadow. She was (they specially emphasize it) "the most beautiful creature I have ever seen" as one of the characters says and who could have portrayed such a creature? (Ava Gardner or María Félix, of course) but there is nothing like our own IMAGINATION and Hitchcock new it.

In this case I'm afraid they didn't know that.

The movie is too noisy with screams and shouting and crying and that goes on for too long with a hand held camera shaking your brains continuously by moving hysterically in all directions at once, making the watching very fatiguing. But it isn't such a horrendous film as so many critics said in their reviews. I don't have the heart to recommend it, I'll leave it up to you.

Another one of those found footage movies that you really wish nobody ever "found". Not only are the characters super fake and annoying, they all entirely ad-libbed their lines, which sets you up for each character repeating everything over and over since there was no script. The special effects are even worse. It's almost physically painful to watch. I really wish they could make a good found footage movie without the acting being super awkward. Nothing about it was realistic or even close to believable. The little girl with the pigtails will make you wanna rip your head off. She says she's thirteen but she acts like a little five year old. It's exhausting. If you are unfortunate enough to watch this movie then you are in for an hour and thirty minutes of pure torture.

i just got to say this is the worst film ever! what is wrong with these people? is it desperation? since lately i've noticed that almost every one is taking this homemade approach to films, where they have this one person or two running around with a camera thats delivering some real shaky video quality that makes the film really uncomfortable to watch. i mean u have movies done like this before that are exceptional, like CLOVERFEILD for example or even CHRONICLE i enjoyed those a bit but this..... oh man such a massive waste of precious time. and whats with all the constant bickering and unnecessary noisiness and confusion in the movie? its very annoying! and this movie is made almost exactly like TAKE SHELTER where for some reason u only deserve just a few seconds of what would have been the best part of the movie and then bam!! u get end credits, i mean seriously man! whats up with that?

The found footage genre is all but played out, but every now and then someone comes along to deliver a different take on it. The most popular genre to use this technique seems to be horror as a new one comes out all the time. The latest Area 407 delivers their take in this style in hopes of possibly delivering something new.

Area 407 follows a group of people involved in a plane crash. What they don't realize is that they have crash landed in a government testing area and something more sinister is out there with them. The story is pretty simple and works well delivering some decent build up and creepy moments. Throughout the story it slowly builds keeping you wondering what is chasing these unsuspecting victims. What really puts things off on this film are some of the characters. They all spend the majority of the film either screaming, fighting, or complaining making the whole thing gets real old real fast. You expect a certain level of this behavior in this situation, but they overplay it for so long you spend most of the time annoyed and waiting for something to kill them. There is never too much explanation on what is really going on other than the government's involvement which would be fine had it not had the ending it did.

Unlike a lot of these films, there is a pay off at the end even if it's not all that great. Once you see the direction the film leads it makes some of the previous moments in the film not make as much sense in regards to some of the kills. This isn't a horrible addition to this genre, actually for a smaller budget it's not all that bad, but with some toned down characters and a little more discovery could have been much better.

http://www.examiner.com/movie-in-dallas/bobby-blakey

I thought that, being some kind of fan of found footage movies, nothing could really let me down so much. Man, was I wrong.

Here we have a film with no qualities whatsoever. At the beginning, I was happy to see a girl (Jess) who reminded me of a chick I went out with a few times ages ago (hey, Rosemary, hello if you are there!). I decided to try to cope with the EXTREMELY annoying mixture of nails running through a blackboard and forks scratching a plate that is the voice of the sister (Trisha). Boy, this -supposedly- 13 years old girl not only behaves like she's 8, but that bloody screeching thing she had for a voice... Jesus Christ. Anyway, at the very beginning, I found the actors natural enough and I thought "ok". Then, 5 minutes into the movie, I was starting to wonder why nothing is happening at all. After the movie goes on and the "actors" show their true colours of stereotypes and horrendous acting, I started to skip chunks by fast forwarding because NOTHING happens in this movie. There's a lot of unrelated talk, of walking around while they are at it, when they are not simply getting hysterical for no reason or repeating "shut up, Charlie". I could fast forward 5 minutes and they'd still be talking about the same (how my leg is hurting or how tired they are), still the camera focusing on their strides while they walk a dirty road. The whole movie is like that.

In total, I'd say that, throughout the 1h 29sec of film, we get to see 5 seconds of blurry bad CGI (2 of them at the very end of the movie). And perhaps about 10 secs of (what is supposed to be?) scary noises (a mixture of lions in heat and dinosaurs with bowel problems). That's all there's to this movie. There's no terror, sense of dread, no real mystery or feeling of threat. SERIOUSLY. NONE. Not even a jack-in-the-box type of scare.

At some points, I smiled or even laughed a couple of times because of the crap acting or ridiculous situations (which are suppose to be very serious and frightening).

At some point, as well, I stopped thinking about that girl I used to know and forgot about hoping to see the actress showing her big bare bust (sorry, I had to focus on something during this garbage of a film, and like I said, she brought back memories of someone else) and simply hated her, like the rest of the people involved in this pathetic movie.

I could almost say that, as an exception, the IMDb score is right. Although, on second thought, that's not correct. This movie deserves a much lower score. This movie is RIDICULOUS. Maybe your 5 years old child will find some amusement while wasting precious time instead of doing something more useful. Like, nothing. After all, that's what they do in this movie. Why would you watch a fiction when you or your toddler can experience firsthand the excitement of doing nothing?

So, hey, if you are bored with your friends, grab a couple of cameras, go out there with some of them while some others hide in the bushes farting a couple of times for scary special effects, run a bit for 2 minutes screaming around and making crazy people noises while drooling, get some tomato sauce on your temples, stop and talk about the weather for 15 minutes and repeat. You can edit the film back at home and use any freeware to add some shitty visual effects for a fraction of a second here and there. You need to be no computer expert! And voilà. Oh, and remember, getting a chubby busty girl to do a topless might get you that extra point!

..Although, you'd probably need more money to achieve that frontal nudity than the total budget for the entire piece of art.