The Devil Complex

Literally nothing happens. Even the forest is bland and uninteresting with snow everywhere.

There is too much of build up at the beginning, but nothing happens. They run around, abuse each other, get scared, die; but for what reason? It is just lazy lazy film making.

There are some films which leave questions and make you think, but this is not one of those; for the simple reason that there are no clues or hints as to what happens to the characters.

The characters themselves are so weakly developed, that you just want them to die and the movie to end. In the beginning there is a lot of noise made about how it causes people to encounter their sins and judge them; but nothing of that sort really happens.

Waste of time watching this crap!

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.

An amazing setting only can't do much for a found footage horror movie with low budget, uncharismatic actors with foreign accents and an overdone storyline. That being said, the movie misses the point of being scary and it looks like it doesn't even try. The scenes happen as they come, without momentum or a real terror content and it comes close to being just necessary chapters to respect the genre it is supposed to be, all in all weakly acted and directed. The actors are the main issue here. They just don't go together and that's obvious from the beginning. It's like none of them want to be there. I wasn't expecting much from it, but can't say I'm not somewhat disappointed about the lack of one or two well-crafted scares which would've saved something out of this lame duck movie. A missed shot.

In theory, THE DEVIL COMPLEX could have been a decent movie: the setup of a small group investigating a mysterious forest in Transylvania offers an opportunity for building an atmospheric creepy story, but, sadly, that opportunity was squandered.

The film opens with a tension-killing excerpt of the last scene, and apart from the interviews with the locals early in the movie we don't get to see much of Romanian culture or mythology. Even the landscape shots, which could have provided an opportunity for eye candy, turn out to be mediocre. There is barely a build-up of suspense, except for the creepy guide who somehow seemed inauthentic for the roIe.

I guess the conceit of this film is that the explanation of the mysterious happenings in the forest resides in the dark secrets each participant harbors, but those secrets turn out to be so extremely dark as to seem contrived (Seriously, would anyone with a history like these guys go into a forest that is even just rumored to judge and punish you for your bad deeds?).

Even after the eerie and deadly events begin, the movie is somehow not able to ratchet the tension. Disappointingly, we never even see or know exactly what is meting out the judgments on those poor souls.

This is a very bare bones movie, and I cannot shake the suspicion that the Romanian setting was not chosen so much for the historical treasure trove of story opportunities it could have provided, but simply because it was cheaper to film there. While it is not among the worst found footage horror movies, it is thoroughly unexceptional, and the only really suitable audience for this consists of those who want to see all possible variations on the basic BLAIR WITCH concept.

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.