Conjuring Tapes

Conjuring Tapes felt like a strange but intriguing watch. It had moments of suspense that kept me curious, but also left me a bit confused. At times, I even wondered if it was a short film or something based on real events. The concept felt new and different, which made it worth watching once, but the overall execution could have been sharper.

I try hard not to be mean with my ratings. I am sure that the people who made this "movie" tried their very hardest to make a good movie on what I must presume was no budget. However, the final product was pretty boring and not at all scary. This movie did not even have one good jump scare. The people who are supposed to be possessed look like teenagers who have applied their own makeup for a Halloween party at the local high school. The actors were not good enough to make up for a very poor plot and just terrible direction and production. I have to wonder how anybody actually watched this movie and gave it a rating over a 3?

I have no clue as to what I just watched.

If 'Paranormal Activity ' had a special needs cousin, this would be them. It started out strong with the two friends and then went down hill from there...

There was no real cohesive thread that connected these stories aside from the same two actresses in (almost) each of them. The stories weren't good on their own much less thrown together in this mix of "What happened?" And "Did I have a stroke" moments.

This is one of the most horrific pieces of slop I've seen in a long time. This feels like 10 segmented, disjointed shorts that were slapped together hastily using two women watching VHS tapes. This movie feels like double the runtime and had my eyes glazed over within the first 20 minutes. Although the first two shorts had some humorous parts to them the rest of the film tries to be more serious and lean into the horror genre but fails at both. The 69 minute run time felt like 420 minutes. If you're looking for something to make you want to take your own life out of boredom and then look no further; this will get the job done. If I could have I would have stopped the movie in the theater and buried the film to save anyone else from seeing this mess.

If you liked the anthology found footage film The Christmas Tapes from a couple years back, you're almost certain to enjoy this film as well.

It's from the same filmmakers and has a similar format to that one -- a series of first-person horror vignettes introduced as tapes being watched in a frame story -- but the haunting/possession theme and the decision to shoot the wraparound outside of the found footage style makes this distinctive.

The stories themselves are all enjoyable with zero duds which is quite an accomplishment for a low budget horror anthology. Personally I enjoyed the final story set within the world of a cult the best, but to each their own.