There’s been a hypefest surrounding this movie’s release in all the social media channels, and it got the better of me. I paid the full price and saw it on opening night, and I left the theater ticked off. I can’t see what people are finding so great about this movie, despite the 90% at Rotten Tomatoes and all of that twitter spam. This is a terrible horror movie. It’s not scary. It’s not thrilling. It’s not even interesting. Don’t let the spooky trailers fool you- NOTHING happens in this movie. What tiny bit of action there is happens in the last 3 minutes, and it’s anticlimactic and stupid. Even if you all you want is to furtively rub elbows with strangers who smell like fake butter and Skittles, there has to be a better place to do it. I can’t recommend this movie to anyone in good conscience.
If I had seen this movie on YouTube, maybe played out in the episodic format of the “LonelyGirl15” saga, I’ll bet I could have liked it. I think the lowered expectations of a no-budget medium like web video would have served to obscure some of its glaring faults. Delivered serially, I don’t think the story could have bored me the way it did when presented all at once. The bush-league acting wouldn’t have seem so out of place, either.
The main reason this movie sucks so hard is that there’s barely a story. A young San Diego man who apparently makes a nice living day trading (is that still a job?) buys a video camera, hoping to document the creepy paranormal events that have plagued his student girlfriend since she was 8. We see these events escalate with excruciating slowness through the night-vision eye of the new camera. Only two other characters make an appearance: a psychic from LA who is deeply uncomfortable with the vibe of the house, and the best friend of our afflicted heroine.
That makes a total of four characters who leave their house a total of twice. Both times they go no further than the backyard.
That’s a profoundly uncinematic setup, and it delivers an uncinematic result. I know there wasn’t much budget, but I’m not feeling all that forgiving.
I think PA is probably gonna make a lot of money, and the comments I’m reading online indicate that I’m nearly alone in hating it. Unless they have an unnatural fear of sleep-loitering and door-slamming, however, it’s hard for me to imagine what all these people are seeing.
