Being a writer makes for some unusual opportunities. Over the course of my career, I have written for a few websites and reviewed a lot of movies. One movie I was asked to watch has, to my knowledge, never seen the light of day after my less than flattering review. True story.
Among many of the movies I've watched, many of them would be considered "found footage". But nothing that I have seen comes close to Final Entries: The Video Diary of Madi O. While most found footage movies let the cat out of the bag after a brief period of time, Final Entries is playing the long game. The movie's IMDb page is empty of actors' names or even a director and there are no mentions of the real names of our characters "Madi" or "Jenna" anywhere.
The movie focuses on Madi (obviously) and her friend Jenna, two New Zealand teens, who decide to spend a week squatting in an abandoned house. Of course they shoot their experience on Madi's video camera. With terrifying results. Ok, not terrifying. Predictable results.
In a move similar to Paranormal Activity, most of the scary bits take place at night. The constantly moving camera relies heavily on using blind spots in the room to sneak the scares onto the viewer. The day time footage for the most part is the girls talking about the scary thing or things that happened the night before. Until the last fifteen minutes, the film doesn't really pick up, leaving you with YouTube quality clips of things like girls climbing fences and stealing fruit.
While Final Entries has a great concept in its marketing, that does not make up for an inferior film. I was glad to have watched it once, but I won't be revisiting this one any time soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment