Rorschach

a no-budget haunted house mockumentary released directly to youtube, this is the cinematic equivalent of self-publishing

every horror fan knows the formula — a team of skeptic ghost hunters sets up shop in a supposedly haunted house in attempt to explain the strange phenomena afflicting a fearful family, only to be met with stranger and stranger occurrences as the story unfolds

it's nicely edited, not too shaky for the hand-held style, the dialogue feels more natural than scripted; the story is believable and manages to entertain without any jump scares, levitating beds or characters being thrown from one side of the house to another by unseen malevolent forces

it may not be the 'scariest film online', as the subtitle on the youtube upload suggests, but watching it alone in the dark at night, i did begin to feel a little apprehensive. this is an excellent effort for a budgetless feature film debut; i'll definitely be keeping an eye open for future projects by writer/director C.A. Smith

A good liitle horror movie and quite creepy in parts. The strongest feature though, is the bit of quality delivered in the brooding soundtrack. Nice watch and well put-across.

All you need to know before watching Rorschach is it's about a mother who's hired a pair of paranormal investigators to either debunk or confirm her house being haunted. She and her young daughter have been experiencing strange events since the grandmother passed away.

This is a found footage film and a low budget one at that but the creativity and simplicity makes for a perfect mix of creepy, believable, effective horror.

Every detail is well thought out and executed that it's easy to get caught up in this D.I.Y haunted house story.

Hopefully other independent filmmakers will be inspired to break new ground with this genre instead of using the copy and paste formula which gives it a bad name.

Figured I'd write one more review since there are only 2 so far. :-)

For a micro-budget movie, this is pretty good. All the acting is very natural; it really does feel like we're watching real people going through some actual creepy experiences. The way they handle things isn't strained or contrived. Each person has their own personality and each of them seems like someone I might encounter in real life. The minimal budget means there are no eye-popping effects (or other standard movie fare such as chase scenes or bloody violence), but it doesn't hurt the sense of immersion into the paranormal, thanks to the smart choice made by the movie makers to focus (a la "Blair Witch Project") mostly on the people and their emotions rather than the spookies.

Ultimately, I can't rate this as a great movie, but I can say that if you like creepy movies and you're in the mood for a cheap one set in modern suburbia, this one should entertain you.

Found footage with a twist and what's the twist? That it's actually quite good.

Ever since The Blair Witch Project (1999) we've been awash with found footage movies. Primarily because they are cheap to make and this one as well was made on a budget of less than 10k.

Sadly they are almost always terrible, the low budget generally means that nothing happens and for the most part this is no different.

What Rorschach does differently is the tension, the creators knew what they were doing. They have created a well constucted genuinely creepy movie despite the lack of budget or the fact it's devoid of originality.

If you don't like the genre you won't like this, but if you have any faith left in found footage this little gem is worth your time and I'd happily watch a sequel.

The Good:

Very well made

Believable

Tension is built perfectly

The Bad:

No originality at all

Still just a cliched found footage film

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

This sub genre still has life in it