616: Paranormal Incident

What can I say that probably already hasn't been said of "found footage" movies. Some can carry it off, at least enough so you stay focused on what you are watching and can view it to the very end. Others? Not so much. I watched 616 Paranormal Incident in the hope that the trailer I saw gave me some indication of what to expect. I was deceived. The flow and premise of the story makes it unbelievable from the start. The characters and the roles they play are neither believable nor are they interesting enough to compel you to really "get into" this movie. It's almost as if every moment designed to make you jump and gasp in fright is like every other you've seen with movies of this genre and after a while you are left with a feeling of "been there, done that, not impressed". The location to me looked very much like the notorious Linda Vista Hospital in L.A., a notoriously active paranormal location that is soon to become apartments. To me, that would have made a better story for a movie than this did. I mean imagine it, creepy hospital shut down over charges of mistreatment of patients and with a long list of potential candidates for haunting it gets bought by a developer with designs on turning that facility into an apartment complex. That my friends is fodder for a real scary movie! Some may fault the actors in this film for not delivering the movie as it was intended. It isn't their fault, you can only do so much with what you have and even the best actor in the realm of television or big screen could not have carried off this movie and saved it from its obvious lack of substance, story line or anything else that makes for a movie experience the audience can comprehend and enjoy. Don't shoot the messengers for this mishap, the actors did fine given what they had to work with. I thought that the makeup was somewhat well done. It was in line with what I have come to expect from these types of films but it was also done well enough that I didn't find myself rolling on the floor laughing at the attempt. This movie, for me, was a one and done. If you have nothing else to watch, it is an option for you but only if you have nothing else to watch.

HOT MESS ALERT! This found footage film was obviously low budget, but when they go low budget, do they have to go low budget on the screenplay too?!? I mean, 3 minutes into the film, it literally switches to a porn setup. We go to a hand held camera shot of a fake foreign sounding dude following a hot babe around while she continuously keeps flashing him. If I wanted to watch a porno, Id go watch one, but I came to watch a horror movie. I don't like to mix the two together, and yet, some horror filmmakers think that they go together like zombies & brains. Anyhoo, back to the mess, so then the film goes to investigating an abandon prison by the FBI and the FBI's cameras… yeah, I'm still confused. When the lead FBI Agent bends over and the camera focuses in on her tramp stamp that was it for me. I made it 22:10 into the movie and that's only because I really wanted to give a full review, but I just couldn't make it. This is definitely one you want to pass on.

1 outta 10

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This is by far, the lamest movie I have watched in a long time! Let's start with the cast: It looks like the casting came from the throw-aways of a porn movie. These "FBI" agents are more like a group of college-kid-wannabe's. The lead agent is a Huey Lewis-looking character with random acts of dramatic outbursts. The evil entity is completely devoid of any frightening characteristics. Now the setting: The set (which is supposed to be an abandoned criminal prison) is extremely clean, freshly painted, and has new, completely intact furniture. As if that weren't unbelievable enough, the audio-visual equipment that these "agents" are using is the best Radio Shack could have offered on the clearance aisle. For the plot: The premise is that of an abandoned mental asylum that is due for demolition, a demolition only the can only be carried out by an elite FBI team of parapsychologists. Wait, what? I won't divulge any of the plot points, because there simply aren't any. If you have about an hour and half to spend and completely hate yourself, then by all means take this horrendous journey into lameness.

Recognizable actors like Thomas Downey and Rib Hillis aren't really an A List line up, but you'd think if they could afford to cast faces you recognize they could afford qualified sound people. This movie has the sound quality of a found footage movie filmed on goodwill vhs cam by drunk 1980's highschool kids.

This is a pretty bad found footage horror movie that I have seen, but it isn't the worst. It's interesting how the opening is different with a woman receiving a package that contains the footage. The actual story is standard with a group of people going to an abandoned prison to look for something. It's easily predictable and mostly uses cheap jump scares throughout. One interesting thing is that current characters are teleported to somewhere else, and I guess it reflects something that I don't know about. This is a mixed bag with current scenes that have decent tension to it, while some it outright ridiculous on how it was executed. There are some chilling moments in the movie, like one of the characters gets burned alive and one of the ghosts staring at the camera. But the movie isn't scary at all because it happened pretty quickly to have any tension to it. There's also them finding a strange girl who mostly does generic supernatural force towards the characters and saying rather generic things. I have nothing to say about the characters because all of them are extremely bland and aren't that likable at all. The movies don't give us a reason why we should feel for these characters, and they lack any development for them. And the acting is pretty bad in this movie. There's little to say about the special effects of the movie. Some of these ghosts have blank eyes to them, which looks rather generic looking but with expectation of one. Now, most of the found footage is done by characters wearing glasses cameras, which is an interesting concept for a found footage movie. Also, I want to point out that some of the sounds designed in the opening and one of the teleportation scenes are pretty bad.

616 Paranormal Incident is best forgotten because this movie is both bad and dull. It's not the worst one that I have seen, but I would not recommend checking out.