Found footage – meh. I never really care one way or another about it other than it’s normally too shaky for me and it hurts my eyes. I’m trying to think of some I might have actually liked and the only things that come to mind are (REC) 2 and Lake Mungo. I was never really sold on the Paranormal Activity movies although I remember really liking the third one. Most of the time I could really just care less and hope for the best to not get a headache. Earlier this year, we covered The Blair Witch that I thought I liked back in ’99 but a re-watch had me hating it and wanting to wretch. I recently droned on about something called The Haunting of Grady Farm and it was bullshit so what did we find here today? Just in case, because I wouldn’t want you to be confused, this horror revolves around the one found with the poster above, not this thing below (which was miserable, by the way).

A man opens the movie by telling us where they found a couple of video tapes and how they found some footprints leading to a lake. Then some sort of official graphic pops up describing the police evidence and we are lead into the story of three child protection services professionals investigating a couple of children who may or may not need child protection. They have bruises and scratches and get weird notes from somewhere and one fourteen year old wants to fuck someone and there’s priests involved and someone gets their face smashed into a mirror and somehow, over night, the power goes out in a house and the water lines freeze solid even though you can’t see their breath when they are outside and there are all kinds of allegations of things the catholic church hides involving priests and kids. I thought it was going OK through all of that – believable enough, I reckon – and then the whole lot of them fall into a lake in the middle of the night.

When they guy filming everything while they bob up and down in the water comes to the surface, it’s suddenly broad daylight. There’s organ music playing that – it’s cool they addressed it since there shouldn’t be a SCORE on a found footage movie unless it’s set at a discotheque – he wonders where the music is coming from, while his buddy is, I don’t know, taking a confession on the other side of the lake, then he’s on the cameraman’s side when he turns around and the chick in the shot above is inside some strange house. Inside the house is also her dead mother and then she charges at the cameraman and his pal with a knife like she’s never seen them before. Suddenly, they are out in the night in some city and then the same chick is a little girl and something is tearing up the streets and shuffling paper around like it’s Superman vs General Zod in Man of Steel.

Then, somehow, they’re running through what I can only imagine is a gym locker room and some man is crying and then they’re in some run down, old, crumbling church or something and some random kids kill one of the characters and then they’re stuck in a room that’s getting flooded and they’re still filming everything and the little possessed girl is telling that lady that keeps showing up everywhere that everything is going to be OK and someone is screaming “19!!!” “19!!” “19!!!!” and then it’s over. I think the whole thing has to do with some sort of allegory coming to grips and getting through abuse but I think this might have tried too hard to be a little too deep. I bet – if you got a hand on the script or maybe the Treatment, this would make more sense but the end result of a child abuse investigation in Daylight, Indiana doesn’t make much sense to a dipshit like me. There’s also something really confusing involving two dead bodies that didn’t work, or, again, I probably just didn’t get it

I don’t really do running commentary pieces on things but I couldn’t think of anything else to say. Found Footage Fshmound Schmootage, I suppose, is what it is but this one wasn’t one of the good ones. The other week I had a good idea for a horror movie – it revolves around a middle aged guy who eats a bowl of black bean and sausage soup for lunch one afternoon at work. No one is paying him any attention and he’s just minding his own business and doing his work and then FUCKING GODDAMN BLAM EVERYTHING IN HIS RADIUS IS BLOWN TO SMITHEREENS AND THE HISTORIANS CALL IT A CATACLYSM EVENT AND FUCK OHMYGOD DON’T EVER DO IT IF YOU LEARN ANYTHING FROM THIS PLACE DON’T DO IT OH GOD DON’T.

Filed under: CRAP