Hollywoods new plan to seperate you from your $ more efficiently

Rating: 3/10 (4 August 1999)

This movie is being sold as a surprise hit, a revolutionary film that will change movies forever, and a fine example of truely independent film-making. It is none of these things. As to the first, the release of this movie was carefully orchestrated by Artisan to maximize profits, to the detriment of all else. If you think that this movie did so well it's first week because everyone spontaneously recognized it's genius, you're an idiot...it did well because Artisan hyped it on MTV shows, in commercials, etc. Secondly, this film is not that revolutionary, and it will not inspire other film-makers. How many movies with this kind of jerky camera work (for instance) can the average movie-goer take? The answer is "Not many more than one", and if there's no market for it, Hollywood won't make it. Also, the way this film was made is just an exaggerated form of the camera work done by directors with TALENT, such as David Lynch and Oliver Stone. In addition, it's conceit is borrowed from a movie that IMDB lists...go look up the remake section on the page. Finally, if you want to see a true independent movie that became a success because of its quality and word of mouth, see Clerks or Reservoir Dogs; the film-making here is atrocious. The dialogue is terrible, probably worse than Manos:The Hand of Fate. The characters do little more than swear at each other and complain. The ending is the cheesiest thing I've ever seen. The people who made this movie couldn't be bothered to think of what their "witch" actually was. Finally, the allegedly "scary" sections were very non-scary. OOOOHHHHHH! Rocks! and stick figures! thats pretty scary. and funny goo too! wow, im quaking! I give this movie a 3/10 (and not lower), because some of the camera work is cool and the concept is a decent one, when we're not looking at a black screen and listening to poorly faked hyperventilation. This movie was clearly made because THE MAN realized he could make a movie for $40,000 and still charge us $8 to see it. Im sure they've spent many times what they spent on the movie on advertising all ready, just to make sure that all the impressionable people will line up with their money; don't get sucked in, don't believe the hype, and if you do have the misfortune to see this, rate it and get it out of the top 250.