The Devil Complex

I love found footage movies, I've watched hundreds of them, but this was the only one to date that got me angry. It's terrible, bad script, bad acting, it's hard to watch until the end. It is a project that tried to imitate the blair witch but ended up getting bizarre.

This has to be one of the worst films that I have ever seen.

If you like watching a few, very uninteresting, people walk through snow-covered woodlands for most of the movie, then you're in for a real treat. I can honestly say that I don't think I've ever seen a film with such a weak cast and such a weak plot. It's like a really bad Blair Witch in that it's set in a haunted forest, but it has no believable scares or any interesting characters. The characters and plot are so lame, it's like a few people, without an ounce of imagination between them (and I'm not exaggerating here), got together and shot an extremely low budget amateur home movie.

I'm the first person to rant about people giving films bad reviews that really don't deserve them, especially when they give half decent films only 1 star. You know the type of trolls I'm referring to, but in this case I genuinely believe that the 4.2 rating is far too generous.

Follows the typical format of a found footage film, and spends too much time not doing anything that adds to the plot. The very few events that do happen strike me as random and unexplained. I felt like I was walking in circles in a forest myself.

Despite not caring for found footage films at all usually, the advertising and poster were eye-catchy and creepy and the setting looked nice and more attractive and atmospheric-looking than settings for most found footage films. Plus the idea was not a bad one, it sounded strange and is hardly original but with the right execution, or at least competent execution, there was potential for it to be halfway unsettling and intriguing. So there was no bias against it.

'The Devil Complex' just didn't deliver. Have seen a lot worse, it's not even among the worst found footage films out of all my viewings of them (and more than enough have been watched to form that subjective opinion). It is nowhere near as creepy as the advertising and poster/cover looked. It does nothing new or interesting with its idea, one of my biggest bugbears watching films etc. is potential wastes and it is really quite frustrating.

One thing that 'The Devil Complex' did have in its favour was the setting. That actually did look pleasing to look at and did evoke atmosphere that was severely lacking everywhere else. The one thing with potential that the film didn't completely waste.

It though could have been complemented better because the photography lacked focus and did make me feel queasy. The audio is not particularly well balanced and the way it's used is obvious and not really gelling with what's going on onscreen. The direction is pedestrian at best and the writing never has any urgency and quite stop start in its flow.

While the idea was unoriginal but it intrigued, the execution of it is anything but intriguing. The dull, drawn out pacing badly betrayed the flimsiness, to a too often uneventful and padded degree, of the story. The atmosphere is bland throughout, nothing is scary and it doesn't feel like there is anything at stake. Everything is so indifferent. The characters have absolutely nothing to them and are basically just there but nothing else. The acting is equally lacking in much effort, seeming miserable and bored throughout. The interaction is stiff at best and that is only when there is signs of any, which is only marginally fleeting.

Concluding, very poor waste of potential but there are worse found footage films and films in general around. 2/10 for the setting only

What a horrible ripoff of blair witch. Like many commentors said, just follow your own foot prints?!?! And how many ff movies are going to end with someone being dragged away by something you cant see, not saying that happened here, just so I don't have to put that I have spoilers lol.... I love FF movies but their are SO MANY bad ones.