Blur

I saw this demonic possession horror film at the Fantastic Film Festival Australia on the big screen and was impressed with what this micro-budget film managed to put together.

Overall the look of the film was very professional, and full credit to both the Cinematographer and the Director, who was also the Production Designer. The look, the framing and camera work was great and you could see the influence of films by Kubrick, Argento, Hitchcock and De Palma.

The cast were all believable and it was a refreshing change to have no teenagers or cardboard cutout characters. The lead female protagonist was a true Hitchcockian blonde: brave and flawed; the male lead was also terrific, with his portrayal of a jaded, suspicious cop who finds his courage.

The pacing of the film was good, with occasional jump scares, but mainly an intense, slowly increasing, sense of dread. It did feel a little too drawn out once the evil demon ramps up the attacks, with what felt like one too many beats of the heroine trying and failing to escape the evil, but otherwise it delivers and ends, well, appropriately.

Music and sound design were well done, adding such a subcutaneous sense of dread.

Overall worth a watch, especially on a big screen.

A straight to Amazon Prime rental which is frequently successful as a horror film, and then sometimes not.

For a small independent horror film with a micro-budget (I guess that means self funded) it looks very good, this is one of the areas it succeeds very well. The camera and composition work is impressive at times, such as the opening desert sequence.

The acting is a bit hit and miss though, and some characters are dubbed, which was most noticeable in the desert sequence. The cop was good. The archeologist was good, mostly. The lead actress who is the friend of the archeologist is good on her own, but most scenes with others are more miss than hit. Especially the two friends talking in the living room.

The music was pretty good in that it added to the tension, but the pacing is very slow in this film. It is meant to be a "slow burn" but it takes too long at times. Film was almost 100 minutes long, could've benefited for about 10 to 15 minutes taken out.

The gore aspect was good, just should've had more of it.

As this Australian horror film opens with a woman, who works for a museum, being driven through the desert in Iraq. She asks the driver to stop at some ruins and photographs an ancient statue. She then returns home and unpleasant things start to happen in her apartment that will place her and her friend Jade, a bookseller, in grave danger from supernatural forces. An early event leads to a police officer taking an interest in what is going on; at first he believes Jade has done something very bad but later suspects that she is in danger.

This is clearly a fairly low budget film and the plot is fairly simple; that doesn't mean it isn't worth watching though. The setup is effective and once things start to get unpleasant the tension remains high for most of the time. I thought the acting was pretty solid and while the special effects may have been limited by the budget they were actually pretty good. Keeping most of the action in Jade's flat gave the film a good claustrophobic feel. While there isn't a huge amount of gore there is some injury detail, suitably unpleasant moments including a surprising early death and some nicely disturbing body horror. Overall I'd recommend this to fans of low budget horror.

I'm a big fan of Indie movies so I try to be fair in reviews and consider all aspects. With Blur I would say production value is really excellent. Storyline was a little weak and cliché, and acting a bit hit and miss. Police officer was great as well as a few of the supporting actors, but the female lead made me cringe. She is also a producer which made me suspect that's why she was cast in this role.

Overall enjoyable if you can ringfence the lead's acting. Considering this was filmed over 2 years on weekends, there are remarkably few continuity errors. Good effort, but not a movie I would watch a 2nd time.

This movie is a disjointed abject mess. I only watched it because it was Australian made and they can make some decent horror movies. This is clearly not one of them.

Right off the bat you can tell the movie had no budget. And it shows. It's very cheap looking and poorly directed. The writing is totally all over the place as well.

But there's the acting -- actually there is none. The so called "actors" are quite imply HORRIBLE. They can't act. Especially the lead blonde. How did they cast such a bad actor?

The only thing she has going for her is a nice pair of legs. A quarter of the movie is over before she gets locked in the demon apartment and by then you're just wishing she sees her end so you don't have to watch any more of this abomination.