Your breakfast cereal mixed with a handful of marshmallows.

Rating: 7/10 (11 September 2016)

Nowadays, if someone were to ask you what film genre are you into, and you mentioned horror without sharing which ones you actually enjoyed, they would try to keep some distance from you being sort of an outcast or your don't have a good taste generally speaking. The scare genre had been the abominable of cinema since the early 80s, right after the success of Sir Carpenter's Halloween. Now, for the film, good news is it's a pretty decent horror comeback. But bad news is what you are about to witness, once you popped in the copy, is an unsettling 1/1/2 hour journey that may drive you to sleep deprivation. So without further do, if you are sensitive to graphic visuals and eerie soundtrack, then welcome to read this SPOILER-filled review.
From what I can recall, the story was basically about these group of you everyday middle-class family who had just moved into this ordinary, later mysterious, home that hadn't been occupied since the 90s. The father, a lately successful writer, decided to check the attic to find some interesting stuffs that were left untouched. Turns out, that's where the movie begins to play out as it should.
Hawke's character discovered a very eerie, yet innocent looking box filed with 4 vintage Super-8 films the previous owner seemed to had forgotten. He carried it all the way to his current office to watch all 4 tapes. The tapes, from each decade, consist of the similar premise: family enjoying their spare time only to be killed by their youngest son/daughter in different sadistic ways at moon presence.
Then seconds after viewing, strange sounds could be heard and paranormal events starts to take place. All of this goes on until day 4, when the writer made up his mind to move back to their original house. Unfortunately, things only got worse since it turns out the demon had been following them since they opened the door to Hawke's character's "new place". But in the end, he and his family were murdered by his 9 year old (I assumed) girl, similar to how the previous families met their demise.
Anti-climactic wasn't it? Let me tell you that this may be the dumbest, cheesiest, last minute story anyone could came up with before shooting takes place. In detail, the main action scene revolves around the souls of the dead kids, doing supposedly creepy, but ridiculous acts like running around the corridor when our main guy wasn't looking. If you sit back, putting the pieces together as best as you can, it didn't add up. How can a kid tie up his/her ENTIRE family and hang them all up on a tree without supervision?
Nevertheless, they totally nailed the lost footage of the old victims. From the disturbing camera perspective of the killers to the spectacular editing, utilizing teeth-grinding background music with arguably the closest representation to an actual super-8 footage. Not to mention this is one of the few scary films that puts me a hard time to fall asleep. Thus, my warning from the first paragraph sums it up.
In conclusion, if they just scratch the main plot and instead add more coherent mystery elements to it (like Ringu), I might give it a ton more credit. This is like one of those dumb movies that you should at least come across a few times on Netflix with a beautifully crafted gem hiding inside. Hey, even though I'm spoiling like a brat, you can still get nightmares watching just the tapes alone. It's all over on Youtube if you are interested. All in all, a solid 7/10.