Mr. Jones

Convoluted tale of a young couple who drop everything to move to a house in the woods for a year while the husband films a documentary starts off sort of interesting but fails miserably in the last 30 minutes.

Scott and Penny notice "totems" or scarecrows around their property and eventually follow an enigmatic man famously known as Mr. Jones, who has been documented since the 70s. As they investigate further they are drawn into a nightmare world from which there seems to be no escape.

Unfortunately none of this continues to be interesting as the director seemingly abandons the found footage format for the last third of the movie and seems to use this ending part to experiment with different filming techniques.

I lost my interest and felt it dragged on and on and even though I barely understood what was going on, I didn't really care anymore. At least the female lead was a lot of fun to look at.

If you've seen any of the reviews, you already know this movie seems to abandon all reason in the last half so i wont bother but to me the entire plot felt like it was thrown together last-minute like the screenwriter failed to do their homework and threw this together in 10 minutes. A couple moves to the woods to make a nature documentary (because the world doesnt have enough of those?) But almost instantly abandon their entire plan after the male lead loses his car keys and decides to go rummaging through their neighbors basement. There was a very brief suggestion that the male lead has some sort of mental disorder but that led nowhere and had no impact on the script. The female lead somehow recognizes the crap in the basement to be the work of some unknown reclusive artist, so they decide instead to ditch their documentary and go about making a film about "Mr Jones" instead. The husband decides to fly off to interview random ppl about mr jones and leaves his wife alone in the woods for 2 mo with no means of communication. The film initially markets itself as yet another found-footage movie but abandons that format so often it feels almost annoying. Im sure the art dept had fun creating tons of weird and creepy totems but unless you have a thing for scarecrows, you probably wont find this movie entertaining.

Mr. Jones is now streaming on Netflix, and when I came upon it I think I was taken in by the striking cover art (it's not the one listed here on IMDb). It's of one of the "statues" in the movie, silhouetted against a plain background, with some relatively cheery looking writing underneath it. It's a hell of a poster, and a great advertisement for the film.

It's a pity I can't say as many good things about the film, because I really wanted to. Something about the film doesn't quite click, and it's hard to pinpoint exactly what it is. The action is good, the villain is creepy, and there's a good story. All ingredients that a horror movie needs to nail. Even the acting is good, much better than it needs to be.

As I said though, it just doesn't... click. The format chosen for this film was a really, really bad choice. It's completely overdone, and it doesn't suit many films at all(I can think of 2 films where this choice worked). All it really does here is serve to rip us straight out of the action on screen, made even worse by those obligatory moments where the camera dramatically cuts out and random, documentary-style interviews littered throughout the middle sections.

The closing sections of the film are also strewn with bad choices. It slips into a slinky, Lynchian nightmare for the last half hour, which is good on a purely visceral level (it's well made) but it feels practically unrelated to the rest of the film and offers us no progression on what we've already seen. It's all style and no substance, which is a shame when the film actually sets itself up so well.

This is a film that may be enjoyed by some, but not by most. Some films don't need an ending, and do well by leaving out a definitive one. This is not one of them.

This one would have been rated so much higher by many users if it tried to be more coherent and not rely so much on the state of confusion/dream/hallucination. I'm not gonna tell them how to do their job, but I will state my opinion about it.

It has a little touch of "In the mouth of madness", don't get me wrong, I am not comparing them, the first one is truly a masterpiece, I mean, Carpenter, come on, but you can see some familiar drops here and there. The premise is good, the execution is good, the tension builds up nicely, Mr. Jones has quite the mystery air on him the only bad part, well, the really bad part, is that as time passes, this movie loses itself. I never fancied plots that needed too much thinking after it was over, sure, some brainstorming with friends is enjoyable, but when nobody can't put their finger on it, or there are just so many supposed meanings, it makes you not care at all in the end.

So, now that you know what's wrong with this one, it's up to you to decide if you'll give it a chance or pass it. I would definitely recommend it to most, cause I did enjoy it, sad it didn't end quicker.

Cheers!

As you can tell by my opening line I am NOT a fan of found footage films. To me it is a gimmick, not a genre as people keep asserting it to be, and more often than not used to pass talentless schlock which can't get any funding off to the public. Despite this I HAVE seen many, and I always watch whatever I start to the very end, even if I find the experience painful.

With that said I will admit that Mr. Jones pulled it off for me. The plot is a little off beat, the acting is decent even if not brilliant, and the setting and atmosphere move solidly into the realm of creepy quite successfully. It uses found footage in a plausible way... the protagonists making a movie for a legitimate reason just as Mr. Jones does what he does for a legitimate reason. What started as a simple documentary turns surreal also for a legitimate reason. People who, as a rule, really enjoy the majority of found footage films, might not like it, and judging by the mixed reviews I would say this is so, but I think it is because it does defy conventional found footage stereotypes. There is not a lot of running around and screaming, and people frantically looking into the camera and blubbering. There are no scenes of what is happening in their rooms while the people sleep, which I think is the allure this gimmick offers to the fans of it. The 'watch what happens when no one is looking' appeal... 'it could also be happening to YOU!!!' It actually offers a surreal Hollywood ready story, with all its narrative elements boldly displayed on the surface, in a found footage format... and while I don't always love Hollywood either, in this case it was a relief to get a half decently crafted tale instead of the... you know... usual.