A pleasant surprise. One of those rare movies that starts really lame and completely redeems itself by the end, provided you can take some amusement from the totally unexpected over-the-topness of it. First-person shooter in which the “never stop filming!” film crew is crass Americans that goes to a remote rural Eastern European village, pisses off superstitious locals by accidentally filming a funeral, and engages in some incredibly heavy handed foreshadowing before getting themselves stuck out in the woods to get picked off — and yet, somehow, rather than collapsing under the weight of almost more clichés than you could possibly fit into one uninspired seeming movie, the whole thing takes off into unexpected the territory with such a beautifully over-the-top SFX blowout that I think I said “wow” more than once out loud. Special-effects so good that you’ll want to see it on video see you can pause it and rewind to freeze frames through a couple of things. Should’ve been tipped off by the pub sceen in the middle, where it turns out that several of the actors are surprisingly good musicians, if there was just a hair more challenge here looking at looking under the hood and the first hour and 15 minutes of this might otherwise tip you off too. Might have kind of been the offspring of Blair witch and evil dead, if evil dead’s special-effects had been glorious rather than lame. Nobody will ever call this a great movie, but compared to what it looks for most of it like it’s going to be, it really is. Also, makes a couple of nods to actually exploring the role that a camera recording may play in causing a situation, rather than just putting the camera there and taking it for granted for the entire movie, which I found a little bit refreshing for one of these 1st person horror flicks.
