Quite thrilling and enjoyable supernatural offering

Rating: 9/10 (9 January 2014)

Moving into a new house to get in a proper head-space for his next book, a writer and his family find themselves under attack by a strange serial killer that struck previous families in the house and that in fighting him may be more difficult than imagined when he finds out it may not be human.
This here turned out to be quite decent for the most part and really above-average at times. The main thing that really hurts this one is the fact that there's just so much time going by of fiddling with the cameras and not doing much of anything here. The build-up takes far too long to get going that there's an air of boredom at times when it's just him by himself viewing the tapes, and while it does focus on the creepy images at the appropriate times the fact that there's no other true scare-inspiring device in the film beyond the home movies tends to make the whole thing go into repeat especially with the spousal arguments that continually creep up and knock this one down a bit for the feeling of extending the length because it has to. That said, there's a lot to like elsewhere in here as the tapes do get progressively creepier and creepier with their rather haunting and hypnotic images, managing to make them feel like true voyeur pieces despite the heinous actions being committed and there's a real sense of enjoyment it gets from this feeling that's quite contagious at times. The spill-over into real life with the assaults on the family make for quite a creepy telling, and the final half is just insanely good with a lot to really like there with the revelation of the murders, the crime spree in the house and the final twist which is quite good. Coupled with one of the more inventive and genuinely creepy monsters that's actually helped by his back-story and there's a lot of good stuff here to overcome the few flaws.
Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language and extreme amounts of screen-time with children-in-jeopardy.