Nakani

The movie is good, but not great. The potential for great was there, but it was just too dark!! While there are moments in the film that have obvious impact, the bulk of the movie I found too slow and quite dull. Seems to me that the filmmakers patted themselves on the back for coming up with a great story line and got lax about the rest of the movie. Highly over rated, in my opinion.

Watching Nakani was kind of like getting lost while backpacking -- a little creepy, but mostly frustrating and sometimes terrifying. The ending was great, the last ten minutes were truly terrifying; other than that, I can only say that it was a good film. But when nakani is finally revealed/known? It becomes something close to greatness.

The movie itself has some flaws. It has some parts that are a slow burn, but that is all preface for the film as a whole, and without it the ending wouldn't make any sense.

It is one of the creepiest horror/mystery movie journeys I've seen. The scares are mostly...not really scares, but those scenes will definitely give you goosebumps along the way. You really have to stay the entire movie to understand the entire thing. The end is what made it for me. You cannot watch this movie and tell me that the final 10 minutes wasn't one of the scariest conclusions you've ever seen. People are comparing it to maybe Blair Witch, and I get that, but the matter a fact is that these two movies are not the same. The only thing really is that it uses some home movie style footage. But like I said that was preface.

Anyway, its a good movie if you like a slow tense build and good scares. Really good.

This film is not what I expected walking into the auditorium. With all of the new horror films coming out going into the fall, I was expecting more of that. Take a group of people and have a monster pick them off one by one in new and creative (and probably disgusting ways) right?

Wrong. Nakani is not that film.

Its a story of circumstances that take us completely out our comfort zone and drop us into something totally unfamiliar, and malevolent. An almost nightmarish descent into the obscure, the unfamiliar and the horrible.

It had an excellent and sustained tone and feel that was completely about what really scares us. The unknown.

Being lost in the forest is frightening enough. But when you add an undefinable threat into that fear it gets amplified tenfold. There is something there, just out of view, hiding in the dark, and it wants to hurt you. That's Nakani.

The dismal atmosphere, and tension wearing down on the characters, and the complete lack of solutions is what makes this film work. The sense of dangerous mystery that is consistantly following makes the hair on the back your neck stand up.

I won't explain what Nakani is, but its something that everyone hopes they will never encounter. Something inside that assignes blame, and executes judgement.

This review is biased, because I am a member of the Dene Indigenous people of NWT Canada. Part of this movie was filmed on our land, and many of the people here helped to make this movie.

When we were approached by the moviemakers and they said they wanted to make a movie about our legend of the Nahanni Valley we wanted to help, because it gave work to many of us and we were well paid.

We were very happy that our culture and language and our lore is what the movie is about. The Nahanni Valley has many frightening stories of that area, and this movie made us happy to keep our traditions and tales alive.

It is a very scary movie and we are happy we helped to tell the legend properly. The movie doesn't say exactly why that area of haunted forest is so mysterious, but we helped to say what many of the stories have been passed down to us tell. It was great to work with this movie and give the warning that we all know and grew up with.

Thank you.