There Are Monsters

I enjoyed the short film of the same name, and looked forward to the feature. This was, sadly, a disappointment. The premise is largely the same, but takes longer to build tension. The acting is good and the vibe is genuinely creepy.

However, this movie suffers from the same problems that a lot of found footage films do; poor camera work. There are minutes at a time where it's completely impossible to decipher what's happening. Scenes are shot in super close up, with super quick cuts, or even, at times, a completely black screen. The camera work is downright annoying, breaking the great tension that the first part of the film built.

The plot and the acting were both adequate, and even very good in places. It had intermittent "Us" vibes here and there which were creepy enough. But what really drags my rating for this down is the camerawork.

"There Are Monsters" is what I call "quasi-found footage" - some scenes are supposed to be seen as if through the lens of one of the characters' camera, and for some scenes, it's obvious that no characters are recording it. If it were intended to be a bunch of amateurs, or kids, or anyone else who didn't know what they were doing, the camerawork might be somewhat excusable. But even in the "found" footage, the characters operating the cameras were supposed to be professional cameramen.

My ass they were. The movie was so shaky and blurry in so many places, it really took away from the decent work of the actors. No professional cameraman would produce work like that, even on a job they weren't taking all that seriously. As if that weren't bad enough, they continued the horrible camerawork even in scenes that weren't intended to be "found footage". For instance, the main female protagonist entered a bathroom stall at one point. She was completely alone, no other characters were in the booth to film her. It was a steady picture at some points, but a jumbled, chaotic slurry of motion and digital myopia for the most part. There was no excuse for that.

The only other thing I didn't like about it was the jump scares, but they didn't have more than maybe 5 of those. I just hate jump scares in their entirety, so that might be more of a "me" thing.

Over all, if extremely shaky camerawork doesn't bother you, then I would definitely recommend this for you. Otherwise, I'd give it a pass.

I had fun watching it. Agree with everyone about the camera work. It's ironic how found footage really requires the most camera finesse out of all the horror sub genres. It's a balance that this movie leans a little too heavy in the shaky realm that eliminates some moments that could've been really impactful. Kudos to the special effects team though. Great visceral horror for a low budget film. Story was great too. There's a lot of doppelgänger horror out there but this one felt fresh. Horror is best when the gaps in the story are just wide enough for your brain to fill in the gaps and this had those moments without spoon feeding the plot to people.

First, I like the idea of body snatcher monsters and it was executed very effective in this movie. The characters, tension building, subtle effects, it all works here... but... what on Earth happened with camera?! Such a good movie completely ruined by what I can only call amateurish shaky blurry camera work. It's not only irritating, as the story/writing is actually engaging, but also quite uncomfortable to watch. Why oh why, you had it and you blew it completely!

...but the overdone shaky and out of focus cam makes it pretty much unwatchable at times.

Other than that, this is a very decent "Invasion of the Bodysnatchers"-type remake with a lot going for it. It's a shame someone didn't point out that the shaky cam was just absurdly over-the-top and get the camera operator to hold it a bit steadier - like virtually anybody else using a hand-held video camera would.