Dagr

Despite its short runtime, "Dagr" manages to bore the viewers within a short timespan. As a matter of fact, you have to sit through more than half the film before some attempts at horror tropes appear. This is just one of the more tangible evidences of Matthew Butler-Hart's struggles with the writing and direction of "Dagr". Whatever his point with this film was (I'm sure he had one) is not displayed even at the slightest. Some sort of social commentary? Who knows? When the folk horror themes is unraveled at the end, no answers are given anyways due to its convolution. And yes, we've seen the found-footage-within-a-found-footage horror movie trick before.

Trying to carry out a new prank, a pair of women on a massively popular prank channel decide to crash a commercial shoot in the countryside that looks abandoned, but when they go through the recovered footage from the shoot discover there's a deadly evil summoned to kill them and is now after them.

This was a decent enough effort if only let down by a few major factors. What works nicely here is the manner in which the reveal of what's haunting the house comes to be, which is quite effective and chilling. The occult rituals that were said to take place here with the past occupants of the house finding themselves battling this supernatural force only for the new girls to come across the same thing when they arrive makes for a fun time here. The encounters in the house that take place in the second half, where they not only face the robed figure but also see the influence of its actions on the film crew they thought they were interacting with makes for fun time as the use of a creepy location and chilling action makes for a frenetic and thrilling time. The main problem here is the exhausting and draining build-up to get there as this one really takes its toll getting to this point. Focusing on some of the vapidest and irritating social media personalities who are no more righteous than the people they claim to be committing these against makes for a tough time really caring about what's going on. That comes off even worse when they're positioned as the moral center of what's going on as the antics are said to be so popular, but given that hardly anything interesting is happening either with them or the other film crew on location before they arrive leaves this with little explanation or purpose and drains this one overall.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Language and Violence.

I fell for the hype.

I rented Dagr on YouTube and I am very disappointed. This is such a bog standard found footage film it feels like I've already seen it!

How any filmmakers can produce something this generic is beyond me.

And well, if you're going to copy something copy something good at least. Maybe even try putting a new spin on it.

This is just lazy film making. I get it's ultra low budget but don't then try getting us to believe it's on a Blair Witch level of creativity. It's not. Far from it.

The acting is terrible. Yep I get the YouTubers are probably supposed to be annoying but the whole thing just feels like a joke.

There's no actual tension. Not even a decent jump scare to give us something to feel.

There's so many better movies about strange cults. Watch one of them instead.

Even though it's not amazing itself if you want to watch a modern take on British cults this year then try Lord of Misrule. Again it's not amazing but it's far better than this.

I like this genre: found footage horror with a dose of self awareness. But, the lead in is WAAAAYYYYY too long and it definitely doesn't need to be given how little info you actually need to understand for the film premise to make sense. Seemed like they were trying to kill time in order to make it a full feature. There are so. Many. Driving. Shots. Also a lot of talking to random farm animals that they encounter. In general I feel like the two main actors (the thieving girls) are meant to be cute-bubbly sorts but they are also a bit annoying, think Kitty and Lydia from Pride and Prejudice 2005. I think this is mostly the case though because there is so much filler so they are talking and exclaiming a lot but it's very unfocussed/doesn't need to be in the film. That being said, still giving 5 stars because it does get some good creepy bits in and there are some interesting story points in the second half of the film. But you can pretty much read the synopsis and skip the first half of the film without missing a beat.

I saw the trailer before the movie came out and I was pretty excited for it. Watched it with some expectations but didn't expect much from it.

Turned out to be complete disaster. The storyline is just boring and doesn't make any sense. It just looks like the movie is made out of random clips not even connected to each other. Characters don't have a personality and we can't really bond with them. They do stupid decision and die for no reason.

Cheap jumpscares and actors that can't really express emotions. They talked too many useless things that didn't bring anything to the "story"

Overall the movie wanted to be a cheap copy of movie "Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor"

Don't recommend watching it 😐