Shaky-cam "goes up to 11"

Rating: 2/10 (27 January 2008)

Now don't get me wrong here, innovation in cinema is really important and moving the old and tired conventions of how we see the narrative should always be pushed.
The creator of Lost (a ninety minute plot strung-out for five years), has certainly super-sized the CGI, but sadly (as with his other project) skipped on the writing.
There is a level of horror and morbid action, but after a while you think "so what" and that's the main problem with this movie. So to counter this obvious gap, the action "goes up to 11". JJ decided to allow his camera work to be of the shaky-cam genera and unless you like reality TV or any number of coffee commercials you too will be shouting "for the love of God JJ, put the camera on a tripod, you'd think Stedicam had never invented".
Now to the plot, as I mentioned earlier 'young JJ' seems to have been overly pragmatic on the writing and it shows. The whole narrative is a remake of any number of similar stories, but this time to increase the pace, you see so little of what is actually happening that it drives you mad. This is a tactic he used in Lost, but thankfully you won't need to wait three seasons to find out "what's behind the door". The characters are uninspiring and the use of a camcorder as a linking device is wasted because it's been done so many times before, relentless, and we don't really care.
This movie could have been so much better, and it's a shame because the nucleus of a great film was there for the exploitation, but sadly (as with so many movies these days) style over substance reigns supreme.
All in all, this should have been a TV mini series and nobody would have minded, but a feature film, no. When it comes out on DVD I expect it will do very well - providing they issue motion sickness tablets with every rental.