One of the most frightening films ever

Rating: 8/10 (31 October 2013)

This movie is serious business, very frightening experience to say the least. Since I am someone who always wanted to make a documentary of my own, I could relate to it more but I am pretty sure, all of us film ourselves during such expeditions these days. The film triumphs in two areas. One in consuming your entire attention span to travel with these three characters, the other in presenting it to you in a more believable, frightening manner (pieced through amateur footage) This movie is an influential work because it then spawned a slew of similarly made movies (although Cannibal Holocaust was made earlier, this seemed more real and entertaining to this day and age). I thoroughly enjoyed the horror aspect of this movie, and I am not someone who finds horror movies very shaking (Except for The Exorcist, of course) but this was quite scary. I felt mind- numbing frustration in situations when the main characters' spirit & tolerance started to decline, and slowly begin to realize how meek, insignificant we are if we are not part of our society or within our comfort zone or left it the dark with an unknown fear factor, with very crazy things happening around you but you can't see or tell what it is. The makers manage to infuse terror in a very natural way too, that's the main success feature of the film. I feel sorry for some viewers in this forum who couldn't enjoy the film because they were trying to make 'sense' out of the characters shooting such frightening situations, calling it unrealistic etc. Probably why IMDb has a low rating for this movie too. It never bothered me, my suggestion is either you don't notice it/disregard it OR you look at film as their passion, or something humans can do in hopeless situations (ie, if I know my fate is sealed in such a terrifying situation, I would consider filming myself so that the world gets to know what happened to me someday, now that I can't save myself anymore). Watch the early interviews with locals carefully (real people) for you to understand the ending very well. Excellent movie. Definitely goes down as one of my all favourites. Cannot think of a major flaw.