Cold Ground

French found-footage yetisquatchfoot flick. Maybe 50% English dialogue, 50% French (with English subtitles on the version I saw.) A cut above most of the dreck Amazon Prime offers for free. Not bad for what it is, but the imdb rating seems suspiciously high to me. Fairly engaging once it gets going. Subjective peeves: When characters who are discussing disease theories are supposed to be scientists, they ought to know the difference between a virus and bacteria (sadly, the ignorance of this difference amongst the general population is one of the reasons we have more and more antibiotic-resistant bacteria.) They also should know that alcohol is not one's "best friend" in extreme cold, as it actually lowers body temperature. And if it's so damned cold where they are that they're concerned with hypothermia and frostbite, why does the female lead spend the majority of the time with no head covering and only a thin pair of knitted gloves? These may be trivial issues to some viewers, but they definitely lower my rating.

People walk in the snow. A bird. People walk in the snow. A rabbit. People walk in the snow. Trees. People walk in the snow. Dead stuff. People sleep in tents in the snow. Repeat for two hours.

It's rarity for me to review a movie but I thought this deserved some credit where credit's due. I was very pleasantly surprised. It has a Blair Witch feel to it but with less long stretches of B roll. It was nice not to suffer through an hour and twenty minutes of boring footage that drags on forever until the last ten minutes, where they usually throw in every bit of cringe action/horror they can. The story was great. The acting was actually quite good. I found myself actually rooting for the characters.

This is definitely worth a watch, especially if you're a die hard found footage fan. It won't disappoint.

Here we have a movie that so desperately wants to be something akin to Blair Witch you can almost taste it.

What you get instead is an interminably dull movie that mostly consists of shots of scenery and the backs of peoples heads as they trudge through the snow. Then trudge through the snow some more. Then, for a change, they trudge through the snow.

And when our antagonist does show up FIFTY MINUTES into this eighty-five minute movie, it's a blurry mess that leaves you squinting desperately at the screen for SOME sort of payoff for your patience. Let me just tell you, before you waste your time like I did, there isn't one.

Avoiding spoilers, I will warn you that the last 8 minutes of this movie consist of five minutes of shaky cam staring at walls and two minutes of running before an insulting abrupt ending.

Just....don't waste your time. You want a decent movie about people getting lost in the woods and terrible things happening to them? Go watch The Ritual. This ain't worth your time.

If you're into indie movie and if you can give a look to low budget indipendent movies, give Cold Ground a try. Even if with some flaws, Cold Ground is a pretty well built movie which can set up some tension.

I can guarantee that it's more genuine than many mainstream horror or mockumentary.

If you can keep in mind its "indie-ness", you'll enjoy Cold Ground!