Crowsnest

Every time a toilet lozenge like Crowsnest floats across my screen, I think "Hurray! The final nail in the Found-Footage coffin." But given that Found-Footage is built around cheap production value, there'll always be another film student tossing another steaming heap of footage on this craptastically cliché genre, where we suspend our disbelief of multiple camera-operators shooting every moment while they run for their lives.

Leaving aside the format, and ignoring the horrendous After Effects post-production gimmicks (can't anyone do practical blood squirts on set anymore?), this movie is a crime against film-making for 3 reasons:

• Almost 1/2 is stupid back-story about stupid people on a stupid beer run • The plot is a mash-up of The Hills Have Eyes and Duel (but with an RV!) • You've read better dialogue on Twitter, from nicer people.

That said, the acting is not terrible, and the music is awesome. Well, one-half of that is true, and you can decide which.

A group of incredibly annoying friends get lost on their way to a vacation spot and up in the titular rundown backwoods town. Oh and it's yet another of those 'found footage' horror films. Yup, the most overdone irritating sub-genre of the last decade or two is still going strong into the present day.

This particular example of that over-saturated sub-genre adds pretty much nothing to the paper and, aside from a small handful of choice scenes (mostly towards the end) really isn't worthy of your valuable time. I'm due for a good film as it seems like I've been seeing crappy ones way too frequently lately. Not a good ratio.

Eye Candy: Mittita Barber gets (very) briefly topless

Streaming on Netflix as of 5/15/13

First the bad and okay stuff: The movie's plot is unoriginal, the going on a camping trip and die plot has already been used plenty of times and the found footage idea has been used a lot as well. The actors are portrayed as real mid twenty "just out of college" kids, which they did a great job at portraying (the acting was okay) though it became very annoying because kids like that can be very annoying. At first I wanted them to die but then I was hoping they would make it out alive once the action happened. The ending... well watch it yourself I don't want to spoil anything. There wasn't really any twists, there was a few cheesy moments in the beginning and a few bad lines in the script which I cringed at. The plot was straightforward and simple, these "camping trip" movies are not normally known for their great plots so I didn't go in expecting anything shocking.

The good stuff: The word "horror" absolutely applies to this movie, I was horrified during certain scenes. My heart was pumping and I felt like I was there, it actually gave me a twisted feeling after the movie. Once the action started it was a complete on the edge of you're seat thrill ride till the end. If you've seen "yellow brick road" the horror is similar, I guess I would call it "psychological gore". Besides one or two lines the acting was fine, bad acting is something that could ruin a movie and that wasn't the case here (not saying it was great though).

My conclusion: This movie isn't great, its by no means bad though. I watched this on a day when I was relatively bored and I wasn't disappointed. There are a few good things and a few bad things about this movie, the problem is there is nothing GREAT about the movie. If you're looking for a horror/psychological thriller movie and can't find anything you're overly interested in you should give this a watch, I'm glad I did. I think a 5.5 rating is good for this movie, I wanted to give it a 6 but it just didn't made the cut, I gave it a 5 because the rating is already 5.8.

OK, the "found footage" movies have run their course. There are better ways to add realism to a movie without giving you a headache.

This is a very familiar plot, young kids ignoring the ominous signs and outright warnings to turn around. If they weren't so likable, you would be happy to see them get killed. Yes, I found them, especially the girls, realistic and enjoyable to watch. In turn, I rooted for their survival and felt their fear.

Yes, it was annoying to see so many foliage and foot shots and bouncing video but the tension survived. If it was shot like a normal movie I think it would receive a much higher rating.

The violence was sudden, shocking and effective. The acting was adequate and the plot, while far from original, still kept you invested. Worth watching, just try and ignore the filming method.

Don't know what movie the other reviewers watched, but the one I saw was mostly about a bunch of kids riding around in the car arguing with each other about the best course of action. Every now and then an RV appears, honking and rams their vehicle. The other reviewers must have some connection to this film. I am tired of reading reviews written by friends of the film. By the way, how does this have a 9 rating from IMDb? Shouldn't that be reserved for classic films? Most of the film was listening to the actors emote. Very little gore and most of the action is kept for the last 25 minutes. I just watched "The cabin in the Woods"; comparing that to this film is laughable. True, this was a low budget film, but what really bothered me was that I decided to watch it based on the review on this web site, which were totally inaccurate! This was a waste of my time!