You Are Not Alone

I was searching for a horror flick in the mood of "Soulmate", "The Last House on Cemetery Lane" and "White Settlers" and came across this little gem of a found-footage film.

Well aware that there's always a good chance of being let down when trying to find a decent horror movie, and a little discouraged with a couple of the reviews, me and my boyfriend decided to go ahead and watch it anyway. The good reviews were uplifting.

Movie starts with one of my favorite horror movie scenarios - couple moves to old house far from people. This time as a house swap where the main couple come from LA, USA to the countryside of Glastonbury, England to work. It is filmed as the video diary of a screenwriter and his musician girlfriend, and it's actually pretty convincing as such. Their work getaway starts off idyllic, but soon they realize everything isn't as it should as strange things start to happen in the night.

The movie manages to keep the tension throughout the story, and there were several occasions where I wanted to hold my hands up ready to cover my eyes. So if you like atmospheric indie horror films and the found-footage genre (this is one of the better in the genre, IMO), you should definitely check this out. You might be surprised!

Really enjoyed this after being very nervous reading some of the negative reviews. However I found the acting good the filming good and the story good. Great jump scares and very paranormal activity. A couple of cheesy mistakes but on the whole I would say go for it.

The couple very believable Americans and the filming In England also felt real and well executed. A great old house in the countryside adds to the tension. You just know that something is going to happen and the anticipation was pretty exciting.

Like I say this would have fit in well with the paranormal activity franchise because it really eludes to it.

The guy above who gave this movie the highest regard is obviously just jerking your chain. This movie really is terrible. It is so bad that I am making my first IMDb review post just to ensure you know it. From the absolutely unoriginal plot to the absolutely irrational choices the characters make it is poorly planned. And not just irrational in the excusable sense-- like "they are scared so they might do something stupid like that", but irrational in the sense any person with half a brain or better would come up with a better idea than the leads do. The acting is not the worst I have seen... it is mediocre, but not terrible, and that is probably the only thing that keeps me from calling it one of the worst movies ever, but the scriptwriter and director must be absolute morons to not see the holes they have created. I will admit that, to me, found footage is a cheap gimmick used in the vast majority of cases to get away with making garbage, and it has got to the point now where it is mostly just really dragging the horror genre down, but this, even among found footage films, is one of the poor examples of the bunch.

If you are looking for a slasher, this isn't for you. But if you enjoy a taught, psychological approach to horror, this should be right up your street. OK, the 'found footage' format is a bit tired these days, but judging by the date this movie was completed, it seems to have been conceived around the time of Paranormal Activity's success, and should have been released before the slew of crappy 'found footage' movies I've had to watch since then. The male lead is a cocky type, shooting his own home movie of his experiences, and the female is a doll fast losing patience with him. In these terms the performances of both the leads are convincing. There are enough scares along the way to have the girls in our home squealing with fear, and there are a couple of pay-offs in the end that had me jumping, and I'm the kind of person who usually laughs off supposedly scary horror movies. Definitely worth watching, but it shouldn't have been released with an 18 cert, as it is no gore-fest.

This kind of topic is not paranormal anymore, but it remains not so bad, efficient if you watch this only from time to time. But IF you see this kind of horror film one after the other, that's another matter. It belongs to the very very very long list of features which DNA is named CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, BLAIRWITCH PROJECT, CLOVERFIELD, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, and so on, Spanish, French Eastern Europe stuff, a sort of new wave in matter of filming. I think that also can be seen as a disguised way to dissimulate lousy, clumsy directing skills. This way, if a director doesn't know how to place or move a camera, NO ONE NOTICES IT. Because the camera is supposed to be handled by one of the characters of the story !!!! And a character, for instance a simple tourist is not supposed to be a professional skilled film director. See what I mean? This way, anyone with a tiny budget and a handful of friends can make a horror movie in the deep countryside without any problem, no authorization and important technical crew, ONLY his cell phone and above all without any directing skills !!!! ha ha ha Why not, knowing this, I still can appreciate this new breed of features. But, I repeat, in small doses, because it may scare you, and I am an old timer, who grew up with Bob Wise's THE HAUNTING. So, if i want to direct a movie, without any abilities of any kind, no matter the shaky or too still camera, I know what to do. I will only need a cell phone, some friends or a simple broad, and of course some good ideas. ha ha ha