Innovative technique. Not quite as good as it could be done.

Rating: 7/10 (26 September 1999)

I spent a surprising amount of time trying to decide how I felt about this movie. It was not the scariest film of the year, nor even the scariest film of the month in which it was released, If you're looking for pure chills or something that will make you scream along with the protagonists, you won't find it here. It is, however, quite entertaining, and disturbing in a fashion that falls in the general realm of terror.
The choice of storytelling medium is the instrumental deciding factor in making this film worth the price of admission (or of rental). It is such a total departure from typical Hollywood glamour and high tech fests that it imparts a deep sense of realism that could never be achieved by any other means, no matter how sophisticated the industry becomes. But the decision to use "amateur footage" as the sole medium for the storyline is paradoxically both the strong point and the greatest weakness of this film. First, the story couldn't work any other way without a serious rewrite. It would be too hokey any way but the way in which it's presented. But in the form of "real life" footage, it works. At times, the effort to make the footage look sufficiently amateurish to seem real is strained and in some cases overdone. At others, the very unprofessionalism is what makes it so moving. For instance, Heather's taped apology to their parents. Bad camera angle, no obvious makeup, bloodshot eyes, and a shot so unglamourous that even when you've read the disclaimer of fictionality, you still think for a moment... "are you sure this isn't real?"
But the most critical decision point is whether we believe that all of this would make it onto film. There is a pivotal scene in which Josh condemns Heather for "still making movies" when they are lost in the woods. She replies, tearfully, "It's all I have, okay?" Miss that scene, and you'll never stand any chance of believing that so much of this story "realisticly" made it onto film. Simply put, these are aspiring film makers whose life training has made it a deeply engrained habit to film everything. That's as close as you'll get to an explanation for the completeness of the film records here. Still, it's a tough sell. There are things you still can't believe got on film, yet without these scenes, the story would lose a lot in the
translation. That's the double edged sword: show too much, you lose that natural realism, show too little, you lose the story itself. Clearly the film's producers were treading a thin line here.
It worked. Just about. But there was still room for improvement.