The problem with this movie, for me, is that it's just not that compelling or original. The story follows a student documentary project about a series of murders. It starts well, with background on the murders and the man convicted for them, but then we see a lot of boring interviews and filler of the crew talking amongst themselves, then traveling to the scene of the murders in the woods, where of course they get lost and start bickering with each other. Who wants to watch that? It takes way too long for the movie to get going, but when it does, I was definitely more interested. But even then, nothing really shocked me and too much of it felt like a rip off of other movies that did it better.
I gotta give the cast and crew credit for throwing themselves into this. I thought the acting was above average, but not great. Still, it felt like they were doing everything they could to try to make this movie work. The makeup effects were great. It looked a bit like the vampire from Salem's Lot, and that's not a bad thing. Unfortunately, the story is too thin and cliche'd, and drags through most of the first half of the movie. The end doesn't feel satisfying, it feels like a mishmash of the endings from other movies.
I felt like this was a sincere effort from those involved, and I'm giving this a generous 5 out of 10. Reviews here are all over the place. It's honestly not that bad, but it's honestly not that good either. I like good found footage movies, and there aren't that many of them. The worst of them have amateurs who think they can just film themselves for an hour and a half and show something lame at the end. This was not that. This was a crew of talented amateurs who were really trying to do something good, and I could tell they put their hearts into this. I'd like to see what they do next. I hope they come up with a better script.
