Survive the Hollow Shoals

I've watched about every found footage horror movie. Once crazy stuff starts happening, the characters will at least TRY to exit the situation (though rarely succeed). Night after night, he is basically terrorized and then just brushes it off the next day. After about 5 days of this, it just becomes ridiculous and you almost root for him to get knocked off just for being an idiot.

A reviewer said apparently as a negative " it's designed to do one thing.... scare." As far as I know that is the intent of every horror movie since the first one and, if it does that... that's why you watched it. Is it the greatest or is it groundbreaking is the concept new that answer would for all three would be no. Is it scary yeah, is it entertaining yeah. The story if you want to can be torn apart pretty easy and if you want to go ahead. But why not sit back turn your critical eye off and be scared.

3 stars lust for a likable actor...Love found footage films, but this one is a bit of a disaster...Like others, main complaint is not very well thought through soundtrack...Found footage should be as close to reality as possible, not with studio created sound effects...Overall ,just a very lazy try to imitate the classic Blair witch ,very unsuccessfully. Avoid.

A man goes solo camping in the deep woods, and hears human and demonic screaming every night. Wakes up to forage for food. Then to repeat that process for over 16 days or so.

Moronic.

And the sound work/soundtrack is ridiculous.

I consider myself a found footage aficionado, as much as I'm a huge fan of the genre I can judge each film on it's own merit.

This film is promising to begin with, character development is good and I'm interested in the survivalist documentary that is the motivation of the footage. Spooky things begin to occur, screams and noises from afar but nothing that couldn't be explained away, at this point the film is holding together.

Then it falls apart!

It's a massive no no to have any kind of musical score in a found footage film, and even worse to add schlock BANGS! every time you catch a glimpse of something eerie. It's as subtle as a brick. It continues to get worse throughout, all suspense and creepiness is completely lost. You no longer jump at anything visual, just huge explosions of electronic bombs rattling your speakers.

To the uninitiated or casual fans of horror I'm sure that the jumps that dished out from the orchestral bangs will be enough to fool them into thinking that they've seen a scary movie but that's not the case. This film should have been creepy and mind bending, the main protagonist is trapped and can't work out what to do next. Aside from the ridiculous soundtrack there is also no ending or intrigue provided by an open ending and it's all a bit of a let down.

It's a shame that this film goes so awry because it has the makings of something much better, it would have hovered around a 3 rating but it loses another star for it's soundtrack!!