Flavor of the week

Rating: 3/10 (21 November 2009)

Or year, whatever suits you best. One thing is for sure though: This thing gets hyped as "Blair Witch" was hyped when that came out. While Blair Witch had a clever marketing campaign (or not, if you think people shouldn't have believed it to be a true story), this one grows by word of mouth.
While it really is original and stands out for that, that is no reason to give it high points just like that. Apart from the fact, that nothing much happens in this movie (which would be fine in general, but combined with weak characters/actors is a very dangerous unhealthy mix), it also fails to be gripping most of the times. While Japanese movies have walked that way since the 90s, it seems the western world just realises that the "real" world can be real scary.
Well it would be, because seeing situations that could happen in your home or maybe have even happened in similar fashion, might make you feel weird and uncomfortable. Having said that, it would have been great to have stronger performances and characters. Especially the male lead is not only annoying, but just plain stupid. It's common that people in horror movies behave strange and do things they shouldn't do. But this guy beats them all in just one movie. There is doing something stupid and then there is suicidal. Well this guy is suicidal.
Not only that, he's acting strong in one scene, just to break down in another (similar) one. There is no consistency to it at all. There was no actual sense of fear for me, because I just couldn't care less. The only time I was really scared, was when (almost at the end of the movie) something scary happened. And I wasn't scared because what happened on screen, but because a few girls were screaming right next to me! I almost had a heart attack because of those screamers!
Talking about the ending: There was an original ending (the movie actually was ready to go in 2007), but was deemed not scary enough! So they shot the ending that can be seen now in cinemas. If rumors are true than Mr. Spielberg himself suggested the filmmakers should re-shoot the ending.
I didn't even go into other flaws (story/script/editing), especially the latter, because it's a general problem with all those movies that are being shot "for real". Who does edit them? Romero found a nice solution to that, which is integrated into the Diary of the Dead and REC/Quarantine is too powerful for you to notice. With the slow moving pace of this, you will be reminded painfully every other second ...