Encounters

FF has a lot of haters, so to get that out of the way, yes it's the "shaky camera" found footage type of horror/sci-fi movie.

I personal love Found Footage movies. I find them intense.

This movie was decent, kept me awake all the way through to see what happens.

It's not original in any way. The cast even talks about the Blair Witch Project. This movie is basically a Blair Witch Project except with aliens.

Four people (I think they were shooting a movie or show) are dropped off and left out in the northern woods of Sweden. You can pretty much guess what happens from here on out. They hear noises, one guy disappears, and then they encounter the aliens.

As with all FF films, the phones can't reach help. And they forgot to bring GPS.

If you can manage to overlook all these unoriginal flaws, the ride the movie takes you on isn't half bad.

7/10

Yes, I admit it, I'm a sucker for found-footage, as long as it's been done well. I loved "Blair Witch Project" and "Paranormal Activity", for instance. I had high hopes for this film and in some ways it was pretty good - it had some tension though it could have been scarier. But what disappointed me was that it over-explained, instead of letting the viewer sort it out for him or herself. I like having a puzzle that I need to work out from the clues. This film didn't content itself with clues - it told you explicitly what was happening - where's the fun in that? And that also made for no surprises and no real scares. Overheard conversations and explanatory audio tapes don't leave much to the imagination. Which made the ending credits all the more inexplicable - after being led by the nose through much of the film, I was scanning the clips between the credits trying to work out what was going on. I think I know, but the end result was that I went from being told too much, to something that didn't make a lot of sense.