The Bell Witch Haunting

I have nothing against found footage movies, some are fun and tolerable even when lacking in some areas but there are others where they are just too amateurish to enjoy, and The Bell Witch Haunting is one of the latter examples. It is a very cheap-looking movie for starters, sometimes the movie is lit too darkly while the editing at best is sloppy. The effects rushed-looking, poorly blended within the setting and poorly textured and proportioned(almost like constructed as an after-thought, the witch hovering near the table was a prime example) and watching how The Bell Witch Haunting is shot you'd think you're suffering from motion sickness from all the over-utilised and unneeded shakiness. The setting is spooky enough looks-wise but with little atmosphere it feels very bland and too much of a cliché. The found footage itself is clumsily incorporated and looks sloppy rather than interesting, the findings are okay but everything happening around it is so irrelevant the use of it feels like a waste. The sound is mixed in a muddied way and the soundtrack is plodding with nothing memorable. For want of a better word, the script is shambolic with no structure or flow and dialogue that sounds awkward and underwritten. The story has very little to it, it is very tediously paced with scenes like the men that become electrocuted and possessed going on for far too long. Everything feels random with events being strung along together with little correlation to one another and a lot of the time ridiculously executed, and it is very predictable not helped by droning whispering voice-overs that tells us far too much too soon. The tension, horror and shock levels suffer from that and also that they don't look very good at all, plus the ending in many ways is a complete mess, overly-silly and with no build-up. The direction is completely flat and half-hearted, veering on incompetent, and you don't care for a single character, that they're cardboard cut-outs is one problem and that they often act like idiots(especially the police officer) is even more problematic. The acting is not much better, in fact it is too often laughably bad with overwrought crying, mumbling, stock gestures, constant yelling and looking half-asleep, the hysterical mother faring the worst. There is some nudity and some beautiful women but they seem there for the sake of them and are used in a too in-your-face way. All in all, another found footage stinker from The Asylum. 1/10 Bethany Cox

Being a Robertson County resident, knowing the real stories of the Bell witch this movie SUCKED!! When you grow up right down the road from Adams TN you hear all the stories and it would be nice to actually see a movie about the Bell Witch that was actually about the Bell witch!! Plus how are you going to have a movie set in TN and have the date as Jan and have a pool party??? Did someone not do their research or was this just another screw up and they got the dates wrong like they got the mothers name wrong?? Also it isn't Adams County...it is Robertson County, Adams is a City....and the cops that would have responded would have been county but "Robertson County"...again do a little research 1st!!!! Plain and simple this movie was a waste of time!

I don't know why I started watching this; I know if I'd seen the 3/10 rating here, I wouldn't have bothered. The fact that EVERY cast member except one was "uncredited" would have tipped me off too, but nooooo, I had to blow off the usual IMDb check. It's my fault because it come up on Netflix streaming as "recommended" (thanks for assuming I have sh*tty taste, Netflix) and even though I vaguely recalled the title as one I was warned against by several reviewers whose opinions I trust, I had a little time to kill and figured what the hell.

The opening minutes featured some gore (more than usual in a found footage movie with a "haunted house" theme) so maybe that got my attention. A big red flag came up with the voice-over acting by the cop who was supposed to have discovered the bodies was TERRIBLE.

Less than five minutes after that scene the only thing keeping me watching it was my deep hatred for a certain character, (who naturally, survived the movie as a last "f-you" from the movie to me). I wanted to see her get kicked down a flight of stairs or pushed off a cliff or die brutally. This is not a good sign when it's the only thing keeping you from turning off the movie. The character was (I think, because I swear they were barely trying) supposed to be likable, too.

This movie was so terrible, so boring, such an endurance test that I can't even write a traditionally-structured review for it. I have to make a list of things wrong with it instead.

1. Every found-footage horror cliché in the book used. transcription of 911 calls (even when someone on screen is clearly seen making them and you can hear everything fine, in a couple cases)? check. shaky-cam over-use? Check. There are what seemed like several 10-minute segments of someone holding the camera while they run around freaking out and all you can make out is occasionally the ground or trees. Mysterious forces throwing someone across the room? check. Night-vision footage of people sleeping while some object moves around by itself? Check. Stupid fake jump-scares where one character sneaks up on another and makes a "scary" noise as a prank? Check. 2. People keep filming after any sane person would have stopped, under the circumstances 3. I wasn't even sure who was filming what, supposedly, by the end. 4. the movie actually gets worse as it goes along. 5. some of the worst make-up "effects" I have ever seen. 6. some acting so bad it is funny instead of scary... but do NOT see this movie because it's one of those MST-3000 movies that is fun because it is so bad, this is NOT one of those movies.

There is no shred of entertainment anywhere in the movie. At no point did I feel remotely scared or even mildly creeped out, nor did I care what happened to the characters (other than hoping they died horribly for being such idiots). There was no point where I was in any kind of suspense.I could see every jump scare (or what they thought passed as jump scares), or pretty much any action whatsoever coming a mile away.

"Bell Witch" (I don't respect anyone involved in the making of the movie enough to go and look for the complete title) is the reason people hate found-footage horror movies.

DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME! Even if you watch this just to see how bad it is, you will hate yourself when it ends. I hated myself before the first hour of the movie was over. If you want to see a good paranormal found-footage movie, see "Grave Encounters". Hell, even if you've seen it already, just watch it again, you'll have a much more enjoyable time.

This has to be one of the WORST movies I've ever seen in my life. This didn't even seem real in the least. The acting itself was terrible, and I felt like I probably could have put on a better show than what these folks did. This movie was definitely too far fetched with the events that happened for it to even be believable. There were times when I even questioned if I was watching a scary movie because some of the small things they decided to throw in there (I guess trying to be scary) were almost silly. In closing, pick anything BUT this movie because all you'll find here is amazement that this movie even made it out of the studios.

This was not good. In fact, it's a good example to demonstrate that just throwing together all of the typical ingredients of a good one doesn't necessarily work. This movie veers wildly between not showing enough in some scenes (long shots of empty rooms with somebody screaming off-camera, for which we sometimes never get any hint of the reason.) It's inconsistent and pays no attention to continuity. The pacing is bad, with no escalation of tension. People start wandering around in dazes more often and crying more often, but it still manages to not build tension.

To any filmmakers who happen to read these comments on movies like this - it isn't always a bad thing to be derivative. Go ahead and make a knock-off of the Blair Witch or Paranormal Activity. There are others like me who don't care about originality. But please, make it good. It doesn't have to be novel, but it does have to work.