Very disappointing

Rating: Null/10 (4 December 1999)

I was expecting a lot more from this film, after all the hype that was generated surrounding it. To be honest, the result of the film is frankly laughable (in fact, if it was reclassified as a comedy, I would feel more inclined to give it a good review).
Several people in their reviews have applauded its realism and originality. I don't believe this for a moment:
Realism: There are such huge holes in the plot as to make it frankly unbelievable - why did they not find their way out with a GPS receiver, rather than spend days wandering around in the middle of nowhere. The notion that there was some mysterious force sending them back to where they began is completely unbelievable as there was no cohesive storyline which would have led to that conclusion.
Furthermore, the female character actually carries the camera around and continues filming, all the time - even up to the end. I'm pretty sure that if I were in their situation, I'd leg it pretty sharpish - the instinct for survival just wasn't apparent at all.
Then there is the alleged originality - well, this type of camcorder documentary has been done before, and with more success, so I don't know why people would say that.
Next there are the characters - they were, especially the female, so obnoxious and horrible (the bad language they used almost constantly was hardly realistic due to the way it was almost thrown in just to provide some sort of fake emotion - all it did was annoy me) that if they'd called for help, I would have left them there! What were the film makers thinking when they came up with the idea of coming up with characters with whom you could make almost no emotional connection at all?
As for the film being frightening, I don't agree with that either. The makers of this film could do worse than take a lesson from directors like John Carpenter and Stephen King, who know how to build tension - you certainly don't do it by adding a few scary noises and blurring the picture a bit! And as for the piles of twigs, well, so what? How do we know it was not just all a practical joke? While the complete lack of gore was not in itself a bad thing, there was nothing else to replace it - no tension building at all. Compare this with a classic like Halloween which also has minimal gore, and was also made on a shoestring budget.
One other little niggle - why show shots from the 16mm camera in black and white while the Hi-8 camera was in colour? Do they really think that people were too stupid to be able to tell the difference?
Finally, for those who say that you need a little bit of imagination to enjoy it, perhaps that is true, but I think you need more than a little imagination - you need to completely suspend all belief in reality whatsoever!