Decent entry, if not overtly spectacular

Rating: 7/10 (1 October 2017)

Several days after their cousin's death, a reporter and her young son find that a cursed videotape watched by individuals leads to their death in seven days and forces them to uncover the meaning of the tape and how to stop its terrible curse before it continues to be passed on.
This does have a few pretty nice points about it. Among the better areas here is the fact that this manages to really do some stylized individual scenes to give this some exceptionally enjoyable and chilling moments. From seeing themselves in a live surveillance monitor where they notice their face is all distorted while everything else around them is fine, another starts pulling something out of their mouth that just keeps coming and looks like a long string with something on the end of it and another featuring a bunch of marbles coming together on the floor to make the image of a pointing arrow. It's also got the ability to build up some great scare scenes with a really weird dream where they see an image of a young girl who grabs her on the arm yet when they wake a hand-shaped burn mark across her arm where they were grabbed is noticeable, the incidental videotape itself is incredibly tense and chilling and makes for quite an effective central piece to the puzzle and the revelation at the cabin with the discovery of the well and the big highlight where a partially decomposed girl crawls out of a well on- screen and then crawls out through the TV, onto the floor and then starts walking toward him chasing him around the apartment which is just all sorts of chilling. The only other thing that really works for the film is its final resolution which is a rather chilling outcome. These are all great in making the film quite watchable even though it does have some pretty sizable flaws. One of the biggest issues is that the film didn't need to be as abstract and ambiguous since it's a mystery, and as such should provide us with a clearly defined solution. It's apparent the girl was quite twisted, yet we have no idea why she was mental even before being confined as there's absolutely no explanation what made her that way. What's even stranger is her sense of priority as nothing is given as to what she is trying to get out of all of this. It's obvious we're supposed to feel bad for her, but if they're completely crazy, then there's little chance of it happening. It's also not given how she got inside the videotape anyway, or why a videotape which too obsolete a technology to make much impact. This dates the material greatly and really makes the fear seem less important. Along with a plot that tends to go back on itself by never completely solving one mystery before starting to investigate another, these lower it substantially.
Rated PG-13: Language, Violence, children in danger and animal violence.