"The Encounter" is the bare bone of found footage genre without anything new. It attempts to deliver three different perspectives as they come across strange occurrence, yet the production is sketchy and the acting is far from convincing. Furthermore, it soon dives into the far too familiar territory of shaky cam, excessive yelling or incomprehensible scene in dark corners.
It opens with several people with one similarity, they all end up in the forest screaming. None of them registers any connection as the acting is overly exaggerated. They deliver monologues with rigid expression of staring, stuttering and occasionally racy cam show fashion. Some of these definitely fall into the campy category, it's hard to take them seriously even with all the blood splatter.
There are a couple of decent scenes concerning the viral property of said encounter, but these are fleeting at best. The production uses CG which is strikingly inauthentic, lots of blood as though someone spills the catering and nonsensical frantic shouting, especially in the latter half. Cue in the confused running in the forests with night vision or barely any vision at all, and you have the basic found footage movie.
Only presenting tired gimmicks in its entirety, there's no need to experience this encounter in any kind.
