The Girl in the Photographs

I was intrigued when I heard about 'The Girl in the Photgraphs' because it had an interesting title and a potentially interesting premise, with a chance of some mystery in the story. The synopsis on IMDb reads: "A bored young woman in a sleepy community called Spearfish starts receiving photographs of brutally murdered young women. Are they real or staged? The culprit is either a serial killer or some creep with a sick sense of humour." Sounds interesting enough - that is until the first scene in the entire movie answers the question, which just so happens to be the only thing the film could have had going for it. From then on it is just an abysmal mess, not worth anyone's time or effort.

There are times where this film can't seem to decide whether it wants to be a horror movie or a romantic comedy. There is nothing wrong with taking the time to make your characters charming and likable but do it within the context of the movie. The uneven tone is so noticeable that it becomes incredibly off-putting and takes away any chance the film has to build any atmosphere or tension. In fact I can honestly say in the entire 95 minute runtime I never once felt the slightest emotion towards the movie. I was never worried for a character's safety, or charmed by the dialogue, or even for that matter got a single momentary fright. There is very little good here. Don't be fooled by a nicely made poster and a misleading synopsis. It's terrible.

I will pretty much watch anything to give it a chance, especially horror movies because they're my favorite. But, I can't believe I'm still watching this movie right now it's awful lol. It's not the worst movie I've ever seen but it really is a 3 for so many reasons. The worst part about the movie is the acting. It's comical! It's baddddd lol. The main girl has no range of emotions but she reminds me of Ashley Benson (and I wish it would've been her maybe it would've been better then). Also the model who's the "gf" of the photographer was sooooo annoying!! The story just sucks. I only like the photographer because he's an idiot and has a few good lines in it😂 I would say you might enjoy it if you're bored though. Plus it's free on Netflix at least!

This film drowns in monotony as it ultimately leaves the viewer in a literal state of "can they please just kill these people so this film can end" for an extended amount of time, mostly the last twenty minutes of the film. Losing patience to such a degree means that all feeling for the cast has been lost or in this case never felt to begin with, this is obviously a big problem for a horror film when even the fate of the innocent young lead(Claudia Lee) loses importance. Nick Simon fails to create any atmosphere throughout as well as suspense and tension. There may have been a few small jolts of electricity, but they dissolve almost instantaneously.

Despite being well produced, shot and acted with lots of pretty faces and even some nice T&A, this film just doesn't succeed in being what could have been a more engaging horror flick had some serious editing and script adjustment been applied.

But in the end I'm still a horror junkie and I have to judge the overall package against it's fellow B horror competitors and there is enough here to possibly warrant some degree of entertainment for those with the same genre affliction, there were some OK kills and to be completely honest the picture the killers leave for the girl in the final seconds was brilliantly done, though a photo cannot undo the overall average plot and mundane feel to this film.

Though I would not call this a masterpiece, I did find it interesting on the comical side. I know this is a horror movie, but I really could not resist the villains. You have to give it to them, they were a very comic duo. I have to tend to believe that they were the ones who had the true lead in this thing.

Unfortunately, besides that fact, the characters as always in horror movies tend to be painted as being particularly stupid -; especially the blonds. This movie did not fail to deliver on that side. They always tend to make ridiculous decisions. Obviously, I could enumerate the nonsensical actions that many of the actors had (except probably the couple in the bed) but that would make no sense.

I'm not really sure why the police kept staying in denial when it was obvious that somebody was killing people. In the real world, there would have been an investigation and on that side, I feel this was a huge miss by the movie. Nobody would make such realistic pictures of a crime without getting hooked by authorities and to my mind, being fund myself of fashion photography, I'm not sure I've ever seen something like that pass in reality. In that case, how did they miss that part in the movie?

I would recommend this for a quick laugh but nothing really too extraordinary to see there. I did give it a score slightly above the average review scores because I did not find it THAT bad and it was kind of enjoyable at the end because of the some of the very funny or borderline annoying characters in the movie.

The trailer looked good. The premise was interesting. The actual film itself...well...I just kept hoping for it to end or at least provide SOME sort of creepy factors. This movie may work for some but true Horror and Thriller fans will be disappointed. If you can get past the obnoxious and facetious character of one of the main actors well you're definitely more patient and forgiving than me. He was absolutely AWFUL. Condescending...and much more. Horribly written character. In addition I was very discouraged by the police and how they handled certain situations. Finally this movie may as well be re-named "Masked Stabbers" trying in some way to perhaps be like Scream (but failing miserably). I am not sure how this film garnered 5/10...definitely beyond me. Pass.