Shadow of the Missing

SHADOW OF THE MISSING is a mockumentary/found footage film which depicts the last couple days of a documentary crew and friends, who entered an abandoned church in a Welsh town and went missing, before the church burned down the following day.

The most memorable aspect of this movie for me was that I dozed off during the second half. Already, this almost never happens to me, but remarkably here it happened exactly when the exposition was finished and the action was supposedly getting ready to go into high gear.

What struck me the most was how little the film invested in fleshing out the main characters who, I suppose in a nod to meta-modernism, are actually the filmmakers playing themselves. Instead, more focus is on all kinds of side characters of various utility to telling the story. The most annoying to me was the hotel owner, a character apparently introduced only for comic relief, but whose constant self-contradictions eventually became quite grating.

The story offers absolutely nothing new, the cinematography is bland, the pace slow and at the end we gain very little insight. Even for the found footage genre, filled with duds, this is close to bottom barrel. The best part of this movie is truly the poster, which I admit was a factor why I decided to watch this soporific.

Unless you are using this film to treat a sleep disorder, it is a waste of time.

Which I enjoyed. But other than that it was supposed to be a comedy/ horror movie...that wasn't scary at all and not particularly funny, either. The acting wasn't bad but they had nothing at all to work with...or rather the 'documentary' parts were much, much better written than the 'horror' parts, and unfortunately that's not saying a lot. A great idea that needed a better script.

More money was spent on the cover artwork then on the movie production....

I really tried to give this a shot, but couldn't make it through the entire movie. It's extremely slow and seems to drag on. Spend your time watching something else.

This movie is missing anything in the realm of plot or character development or scares or anything of any substance. The horror is your standard found footage set up and the humor boils down to the hotel manager rambling incoherently. The biggest shock is that said hotel manager is actually pretty funny. I would much rather have a movie just of him than what we got.