Cold Ground

I find most other evaluations on this site unfairly bad. Granted, "Cold Ground" is not breaking any new grounds. Nothing original in it. Actors are average, filming is just OK, picture quality is voluntarily made bad, the plot has its share of loose dead-ends and unchartered paths...

But overall, I found it quite pleasant to watch. Why? For the setting, first and foremost. Coldness seems to creep out of the movie and get directly in the viewer's body. Also, it's entirely shot in nature. No CGI, no studio, just genuine snow, mountains, caves... Then, the suspense and its lot of jump scares kind of worked for me, for once... Also, characters were fairly well crafted altogether, quite a feat in itself, considering that they speak so rarely.

So, all in all, it wasn't that bad. I must say I wasn't expecting anything from the movie to start with and I have noticed that, most of the time, with no forward expectations, good surprises are more likely to come around the corner... I guess it was the case for me here.

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.

312. Cold Ground. It's a mildly entertaining found footage movie about a group of people heading up into the mountains to investigate some recent cattle mutilations in the area, two of which are the filmmakers, also with them an American cop researching the same thing...hmmm. Aliens? So it has the same setup as most found footage flicks, a journey, finding a few clues along the way, things go bump in the night, and in the last 10 minutes or so, it all blows up. And this one is no different, well except that it happens in 1976, so they used a filter to make it look 1976ish... If you like the genre, its pretty good. If you don't, I'm sure it'll bore you. So have at it... Was it Aliens? I won't tell. Filmbufftim on FB.

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.

Yes this movie did have its flaws and did move slower than necessary, the story, filming, and acting kept me interested throughout. It was of above average quality all around which makes it odd that it had such bad reviews (with agreement on the review about animal cruelty having absolutely nothing to do with the movie and should probably be removed...). While the negative reviews are puzzling, the aggregate score of the movie is a good indicator. Not a waste of time, but not a must see either.