Cut together from surviving tapes, the recovered recordings of a special photographer going out on a date with a mysterious woman testing new equipment for his latest project awakes the next day with no memory of everything and is soon thrust into a nightmarish search for the truth.
This was a massively entertaining and creepy genre effort. Among the better factors involved with this one is the incredibly realistic and engaging setup that provides this with a chilling mystery to work out. The first half of this one works through the idea of the date taking place while he records everything involving them going for a week, taking in some games at an arcade, or finally going out for drinks, which starts the bizarre series of situations he finds himself in when he awakens the next day. Arriving in a different location, no memory of what happened, and little means of communication, the whole experience being a genuinely realistic scenario that could happen helps to make for an intriguing starting point to the second half as he sets about trying to uncover the truth of what's going on as the investigation that takes place is quite fun to see unfold. That second half investigation here gives this one the majority of its best aspects involving the search for the woman and the truth about what happened that night. The search is soon directed by an outside force to look into her identity, which provides clues of her connection to a mythological demonic entity that was involved in numerous such cases and incidents over the years following a strange clinical trial with others similar to her. As the clues start to point to someone or something stalking him and it gets closer to involving him in the case with a police officer with experience dealing with the supernatural being, there's a highly effective and engaging atmosphere here brought into fine form with the close-quarters found-footage format making effective use of the shooting style. These all manage to come together to give this a lot to like, as there are a few drawbacks to be had here. The main issue is the film's setup that leaves a lot of the film in investigation mode rather than going with more action to denote something wrong following the date. Once he wakes up and goes about trying to figure out what's going on, the means of doing that through the recovery of his senses, looking at the tapes he has from the incident, or the targeted investigation into the history of who he's met up with which leave this without much in the way of direct action against him. While it's all genuinely creepy and unnerving, a more overt sense of threat against him might've helped make this section a bit more maintain a bit more energy during the middle section. The other issue here is the rushed and slightly confused ending that comes out of nowhere without a lot of build-up as it has little context due to the way it's brought about that doesn't clear anything up about what's going on, which along with the obvious budgetary limitations are what bring this one down.
Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Language and Violence.
