good idea ruined by unsympathetic characters

Rating: 5/10 (30 November 2000)

The hype is right - this movie does bring something new (or at least forgotten for about 40 years) back to horror movies - scaring the viewer by tapping into their own fears. That can't be done by special effects. They take you away from reality. The best scary movies are believable because you can feel yourself in the situation. So it doesn't actually matter whether or not you know the story is real - it works because you can very easily imagine it could be.
I liked the camerawork, the grainy film, the clever tricks like switching from b/w to colour & back, pointing the camera at the ground while you hear weird noises. But while the actors were good in their parts, what makes you not care about the film as you otherwise would is the unlikeability of the main characters. It's a fine idea of the breakdown of relationships under pressure, and it's fair enough to show the actors shouting and arguing at each other as well as their situation. But we got too much of this, actually they were pretty much fighting with each other the entire time. This made them unlikeable ultimately - we should have seen some warmer aspects of their characters.
And hey, I don't mind a bit of bad language when characters are under real pressure, but it should be used sparingly or else they're just unpleasant, brutish, and you can't care about them as you want to. These guys (all three including the girl) were shown to be swearing the whole movie, even before any scary or pressure situations - they could hardly utter a single sentence without it! Realistic? You don't get this level of bad language even in settings where you would more likely expect it (eg the Godfather, Reservoir Dogs). That made them too unsympathetic, and for a real scare you SHOULD care about at least some of the characters.
Overall - good horror movie, but could have been quite a bit better. I'd put it definitely outside my personal top 100 movies, maybe around number 200 or so.