I wanted to like this movie, and while there is a lot to admire about its technical craft, the writing ultimately lets the whole thing down.
Given its tiny budget, the movie looks and sounds as good as a major production, so my hat's off to the DP, production designer, and everyone involved in shaping the sound of this film, which is central to its premise. The direction is also solid, though there is only so much the writer-director can do with long stretches of his protagonist simply listening to an audio file while nothing happens around her. The movie apparently began life as a potential horror podcast, and maybe that would have been a better fit.
A major gripe for me is how the writer, like so many in film and television, does not understand podcasting. This entire movie hinges on a podcast the protagonist records remotely with an unseen male co-host. At times, the show appears to be pre-recorded at 3AM for some reason I never understood; at others, the show is live at 3AM and random people can call in. There's an outro that states that new episodes drop on Fridays wherever you get your podcasts, but listeners can call in? And when the protagonist says she needs a minute, her co-host immediately tells her they can just continue recording in a couple of days? None of it makes sense and it blows my mind that people writing scripts today simply do not understand how podcasting works. You may find this is a minor gripe, but the entire movie is built around this fictional podcast.
The mythos behind the alleged supernatural occurences is interesting, but the actual horror is thin on the ground. Not much happens until we get an Exorcist-III-style finale where spaghetti is thrown at the wall in the hope that something sticks.
The script needed a revision. Meanwhile, everybody does a really good job of fleshing out those bones as best as possible. But if you're interested in a creepy story of someone discovering a series of escalating recordings, I recommend you track down Session 9 instead.
