Unlisted Owner

Title: Unlisted Owner

Format: Amazon Prime Language: English Released: 2013

Director: Jed Brain

Starring: Chris Ash, Levi Atkins, Chloe Benedict

A found footage film...still here? I know, I can't stand them either, however, I have seen one or two that end up being good, so I still watch them in the hope I can uncover a gem.

Is this one? Well, yes and no to be truthful. The debut film from Writer, Director and Actor, Jed Brain, he does try and approach this flooded sub-genre with fresh ideas. Most found footage films are shot in a standard movie format, not making them believable as they are meant to mirror the everyday life of the person shooting them, instead they end up covering months at a time over the course of the film.

'Unlisted Owner', doesn't do this. It follows a group of 'friends' over the course of a day, from loading a pickup to the bloody finale. For me, this really helps us get under the skin of the people in the film, to understand them to a better degree than other films in the genre.

I'm jumping ahead a little, so back to the start. The film opens to a family moving into their new home, they are quickly taken down by an unseen killer, setting up the plot of the film. From here we meet your hapless friends getting ready for a camping trip.

This is where the biggest problem for me starts. Now, being English, the word 'friend', may mean something different over here in the UK, than in the U.S.A, but I can not understand how this group call themselves friends. They are constantly at each other's throats and even say several times throughout the film how much they hate each other.

In particular, the two women were so unlikable and annoying, I was hoping they where killed off first in a justifiable gruesome way. Yet for every bad there is a good. The interaction between these different people seems believable if you consider them mates at best and not friends. Add to this the acting wasn't bad either, making the viewer believe these people could easily exist. In turn, this made the finale quite a tension filled jaunt through the murder house as one by one, they fell. In my opinion we could have done with getting to the murder house a lot faster than we did, as again (in my opinion), the set up wore out its welcome, mainly due to those annoying girls.

So, will it redefine the found footage sub-genre, no, but to his credit, Jed Brain does try something new and almost pulls it off. With a little tidying up in the editing studio this could and should have been much better. Yet, as it is, its not bad and it is the first time in a long time I've made it to the end of a found footage film, so that for me, counts for a lot.

First off I wanna say, I've never heard of this film until the Writer, Director and Actor emailed me to do a interview for this film. Knowing what I knew from the more of info email, I agreed to setup with interview. So a couple days BEFORE we were gonna do the interview over the phone for the Everything Horror Podcast (which if you don't like no filter language avoid my podcast). From the time I spent debating to rent this (before purchasing this), I decided to go for it hoping I'd like it and not a waste.

I enjoyed the camerawork actually and the way they acted / setup sets to do some of the stuff was not really noticeable. The only thing we noticed was near the end was the blood, it did stick out to be more pinkish to really not believe it. I did however got an answer via the Interview that the special effects guy they had at the time wasn't available when it came down to the blood.

If you don't swear teenagers swearing like they would when being around friends and stuff, watch this film. If you can't stand swearing almost every line, just ignore it. And if you would like to check out the interview I did with Unlisted Owners writer, director and actor make sure to check out the Podcast.

This movie had potential, but the bickering characters/actors made it almost impossible to finish. There are literally no words to describe how annoying their constant fighting was throughout EVERY MINUTE of this movie!!! The ending was decent, but by that point I was so annoyed I didn't care!!!

The only positive thing I can say about this found footage movie is that, compared to most found footage movies, the acting in this one is not terrible. Now, the negatives. First, the characters, especially the two alpha male guys, were so obnoxious, such douchebag pricks, that I could not wait until they died. Second, the movie was a bit more than 3/4 over before anything "horror" happened. That's right, the vast majority of this film is just some immature pricks yelling at one another. Finally, when something happens, it is not supernatural or even scary in any way. Third, we never find out who the villain is, which is so unsatisfying, given that I had to sit through most of the movie before any action happened. There was no character development, no plot development, no mystery, no build up to a climax, no denouement: just a bunch of hillbilly, immature pricks cursing and yelling. The most horrifying thing about this movie is that I wasted a portion of my life to watch it.

Take away the endless f bombs, and most of the jock jackasses are mute. This is awful. I gave up with 15 minutes left. Absolute garbage.