Lost Tapes: Season 1 (2008)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company: Go Go Luckey Productions

Airs On: Animal Planet

Full Season Runtime: 322 mins

Individual Episode Runtime: 19 mins

Format: DVD

Plot: Lost Tapes is a Faux-Documentary show that depicts traumatic scenarios where people are attacked and/or killed by mysterious, dangerous, deadly, savage, and ferocious paranormal cryptids.

Review: It's no secret that we here at Watching Full Movie Online Free love us the Found Footage genre. Sure, there are some big stinkers to come across, but when done right, that style of filmmaking can be effective as hell plus cheap to produce, so everyone can win. Being a 14-episode TV season, it's safe to assume that Lost Tapes Season 1 includes both ends of the spectrum, and pretty much every step in between as well.

But before I really get into the review, I just want to first mention that this review is a pretty big milestone here on the blog by officially being Watching Full Movie Online Free's 100th review! And while there are no doubt better titles I probably could have done as the 100th Review, I'm really glad all the same that it's a title that comes with it's own little milestone - the very first TV Show review for us here on Watching Full Movie Online Free! Having been put out by Animal Planet of all channels, you can assume correctly that the episode-to-episode budget on this show is pretty miniscule, which taking that into account as well as the subject matter, makes for the perfect TV show to review on a B-Movie review site!

However, such a tiny budget also means hardly even a blink-and-you'll-miss-it glance (if even that much) of the creature-of-note each episode, but luckily most times they make up for that by at least having good creepy atmosphere and fast-paced action, along with some growls, hisses, roars, and whatever other auditory noises they can throw in to add tension. As with pretty much any TV show, some episodes pull it off far better then others, so your view in the show could be drastically different, depending on which episodes you catch on TV. Unless of course, like me, you come across the full 2-disc first season on DVD in the 6.99 bin at Wal-Mart, in which case you can just pile through all 14 of the episodes in close to one or two sittings, seeing as how it's such a light show that's easy to digest, and every episode is totally stand-alone from one another.

Actually, let's take a little quick look into each of those episodes. The format of each one includes 'found' footage from a person or group of people that 'went missing' or had unexplained phenomenon happen to them, each with a different crytozoological or paranormal creature as the focus of the episode. Mixed in to break the episodes up a bit are Talking Head interviews with real people that are experts in the field (such as Loren Coleman), actual article clippings, and real news footage, as well as pop-up text facts based around either the creature itself or the terrain of the location and survival facts.

Episode 1: Chupacabra - This episode deals with a Mexican family trying to illegally cross the border into the U.S. (being filmed by the young daughter on her new camera that she got for her birthday, as well as dash-cams from police cruisers) and in the middle of the desert they run afoul a killer blood-thirsty creature of legend.

This episode was decent and a good way to introduce audiences to the show, with some pretty good tension and some of the better acting this season has to offer. However most of the episode is subtitled since all the characters are Mexican (except for the American Border Patrol officers), so be prepared to do some reading with this one. My biggest issue here is that the show uses the annoying recent trend of a Chupacabra being a vicious coyote with mange. That has never been what the Chupacabra has looked like and it's only the idiotic media in recent years spreading that false description around so now that's all people think of when they hear the word Chupacabra. I was hoping this episode would showcase the original horrific alien-like description of the monster, but sadly it drops the ball and goes with the inaccurate coyote-looking cop-out. Episode Rating: 6/10

Episode 2: Skinwalker Ranch – This episode deals with the infamous Skinwalker Ranch, although it really only touches on one aspect of it, which is an actual skinwalking creature itself (aka, Werewolf-type creature). In real life there's so much more strange phenomenon associated with the place such as UFO sightings, ghost activity, and Bigfoot encounters, but I suppose if the episode wanted to focus on everything it would have to be movie-length, so it picks just the one topic to go with.

Here, we have a son returning home to his family's farm after two years away at college to repair a strained relationship with his father for not staying and working on the ranch, when after hearing strange sounds, he and his father head out into the ranch lands to check on the livestock, finding many mutilated. During the course of the evening and night they get stalked and hunted by a vicious coyote that seems to have supernatural powers such as disappearing into thin air and mimicking the cry of loved ones, in addition to also being bothered by a strange Native woman that seems to have unnatural ties to this coyote, heavily hinting that she herself changes back and forth into it.

Despite only covering one tiny aspect of the actual Skinwalker Ranch, this is one of my more favorite episodes of the season as, even though it manages to take place almost entirely during the day (Only about 2 minutes at the end take place after nightfall), it still manages to send goosebumps up my spine at parts and, to me anyway, the stuff happening during the day scenes was far creepier then anything that happened during the night scene, which is a welcomed change from the usual with Found Footage stuff. It's also one of the rare episodes that the ending may not turn out exactly how you were expecting it to. Episode Rating: 9/10

Episode 3: Monster of Monterey – In the third go-around, we're treated to our first water-based episode. A thrill-seeking woman embarks on a sailing trip around the world, by herself, to break various records. She keeps in contact with civilization via a spotty-at-best satellite internet connection and a webcam, and she records her travels via video cameras set up around the exterior of her sail boat. Along the way she picks up an SOS of a nearby vessel and goes to check it out, finding nobody on-board and blood splattered across the deck. Heading back out into the empty ocean on her own again, the undocumented large mysterious sea creature that presumably laid waste to that other ship has begun stalking her, getting more and more brave with each attack.

The concept of underwater monsters has always been one that grabs my attention, as growing up I often found myself just staring off into the deep blue surfaces of the ocean, lakes, and such, wondering what kind of unknown creatures could be swimming around down there below the surface, just out of eye-sight. With that in mind, this episode was a pretty big disappointment. Other than a few knocks against the boat making it bang around a bit and one very quick 'blink and you'll miss it' shadow zoom by under the boat, there's no sign of the creature at all – no glimpse whatsoever. Also, with her being the only real character in this episode (as attractive as she is), with only an occasional short appearance of her boyfriend via laggy webcam, in addition to the previously-mentioned lack of creature, this one just had me bored for most of its very short 19-minute runtime. The scariest thing in this episode is at the very end when she gets knocked off her boat and the waves of the ocean are pushing her back further from it while it continues to sail onwards, further and further away from her, and she just kind of slowly drowns as the end credits play over-top of the scene. It was terribly depressing and a really anxiety-filled ending as you picture that happening to you...but it has nothing at all to do with the creature attacking her boat (and by attacking I mean the boat being banged around twice and that's about it). Episode Rating:4/10

Episode 4: Devil Dragon – This episode centers around a wilderness survival expert filming his own TV show, Survivorman-style, out in the thick of the jungle by himself, for days on end, showing how to survive and what to do in various sticky situations in the wild. One night he runs into a hungry Komodo Dragon-like creature which takes a good chunk out of him and then let's him go. Of course, anyone who knows anything about Komodos know they take a bite to infect you with their paralyzing fever-giving saliva and then continue to stalk you throughout the next several hours until you become delirious and defenseless and that's when they move in for the kill. The thing is...Komodo Dragons aren’t supposed to reside in this Jungle, so what is this thing really?

Anybody who has ever watched an episode of Survivorman or Man vs Wild or any of those types of shows always find themselves wondering at some point “Man, what if he came across some unknown creature while out there?” Well, this episode caters to those exact people, and overall the results are pretty realistic, playing out exactly like how an episode of Survivorman or Man vs Wild would have had the Host been attacked and the episode was actually allowed to air. My two issues with this though is, to start, even though the creature turned out to be an extinct dinosaur-like animal called the Megalania...that creature looks identical to a Komodo Dragon, so why pick that one? Pretty much every Jungle is filled with all sorts of their own mythical creature legends, including some good dinosaur ones, so why did they go with this mundane-looking ancient reptile that looks identical to one of our already regular animals? It was fine and all, don't get me wrong, but I would have preferred something that actually looked a little bit more unique. My other beef is, once again, we never even get so much as a glimpse of the animal. I understand these episodes are super low budget and we never really get good looks at anything, but quick and short glimpses like in the first two episodes is perfectly fine and all I expect, but these latest two episodes don't even give us that much – they literally give us nothing whatsoever. Other than those quibbles though, this was one of the more entertaining episodes yet, despite also being centered around just one character like the previous episode was. This one is how you pull it off successfully, while that one was just a bore. Episode Rating:8/10

Episode 5: Thunderbird – Thunderbird stories have always interested me, dealing with mysterious gigantic bids that roam the skies and prey on the large animals below. This one follows a group of skateboarding kids, not quite teenaged yet but soon would be in a couple years. Looking for a great new skateboarding spot, they sneak into a restricted construction area just outside of town where they then proceed to get lost until nightfall comes, and then start getting terrorized by a gigantic monster bird.

This episode is centered around some very annoying bratty kids, which sadly means no likable characters to be found here, and I'm not gonna lie - I kind of enjoyed 'seeing' these annoying kids getting terrorized by the bird. I have the word 'seeing' in quotations though, because once again we don't actually really see much at all. This is three episodes in a row now that we don't even get a glimpse of the monster. The first time it was annoying, the second time was a bit more frustrating, but three episodes in a row is just inexcusable. Sure we do get squeals, squawks, and the sound of large wings flapping, but that's it. At least Monster of Monterey had a likeable character and dealt with a water-based monster which is something I liked, and Devil Dragon was just all around entertaining, but this episode had none of those things going for it. It was only 19 minutes long and honestly, I had trouble staying awake during this one, except for the shots where the annoying bratty kids started getting attacked, then it was at least somewhat watchable. Episode Rating: 2/10

Episode 6: Cave Demons – Set in Afghanistan, this episode follows a squad of U.S. Soldiers with helmet cams on as they make their way through a confusing maze of unexplored underground caverns, following Intel that enemy Taliban forces were held up somewhere inside and using devices to block the U.S.' communications. What they find instead though is more akin to mutant humanoid bat monsters that should have at least fans of The Descent really liking this episode.

As a fan of horror movies that deal with army soldiers in dark and tightly confined places, as well as being a fan of The Descent, it's safe to say this episode is one of my favorites, combining Aliens with The Descent and wrapping it up in a nice little 19-minute package. Only negative thing I can say about it, is that this episode has the absolute worst acting out of the entire season, being downright brutal and hard to watch in some scenes. Episode Rating:9/10

Episode 7: Bigfoot – This episode deals with a lone Park Ranger that spends days at a time, if not weeks, staying in a little cabin in the middle of the forest, doing her rounds to keep her eyes on the land and it's creatures, and investigate potential illegal poaching. She ends up coming across a poacher that then chases after her, harasses her, and tries to murder her before she can arrest him for his crimes. Oh yeah, and Bigfoot shows up at the very end to attack the poacher and rescue the Park Ranger, like some kind of woodland critter superhero.

As you can probably tell, I didn't like this episode. At all. Everyone has their theories on the Sasquatch, aka Bigfoot, and that's cool and all, but the one I dislike the most is the very one this episode decided to go with – that the Sasquatch is a supernatural and intelligent protector of the nature realm or some such thing like that. Bigfoot is one of my personal favorite cryptids and I was really anticipating a nice creepy episode with this, and while there was one or two minor semi-creepy moments of hearing the Bigfoot's call in the distance, that's all you get as the episode focused almost entirely on the Park Ranger and Poacher's little cat and mouse game with each other, and then when Bigfoot finally does show up at the very end (which once again we never even get so much as a quick glimpse, it all happens off-screen), it's the exact opposite of creepy and just plain lame. If there's one episode you must skip on this set for whatever reason, make sure it's this one. Episode Rating:1/10

Episode 8: Oklahoma Octopus – A group of teens celebrating graduation from High School go swimming in a nearby large lake that has a lone wharf in the middle of it, and they get carrying on like teens tend to do, just goofing off and having fun in and around the water. That is, until an unknown underwater tentacled creature shows up with an appetite and traps everyone on that floating wharf, away from shore and with no way to get back there without getting back in the water.

As I mentioned during my thoughts on Monster of Monterey, I love the concept of underwater monsters, never quite knowing what's lurking down just below the otherwise calm surface...which is why I hate the fact that I actually disliked the first water-based episode earlier on. Luckily this makes up for it as this episode turned out to be another favorite of mine, even despite the fact that the only glimpse of the creature we ever see is a couple quick shots of it's tentacles flapping around in the water or shooting out of the water and dragging someone down (which is still more than what we got in the last several episodes combined). It also had a bit more meat on its bones than you generally find in these episodes, by way of there being a subplot dealing with the main camera-operating teen secretly being in love with his best friend's girlfriend, and lots of 'going away to college and going their separate ways' kind of drama, actually going that extra mile to make us care about these characters. Episode Rating: 10/10

Episode 9: Death Raptor – Two amateur Paranormal Investigators trying to get their Ghost Hunting TV show off the ground hear about supernatural, and possibly demonic, activity in and around the grounds of this really old, really large Gothic church, and so they get their filming equipment and head out to investigate, thinking it'll make a great episode of their soon-to-be TV show. What finds them however, is not anything ghostly or demonic, but that doesn't make it any less dangerous.

When I saw that this was going to be another giant bird episode, I was instantly thinking I wasn't going to like it, simply because the previous giant bird episode, Thunderbird, was one of the worst episodes of the season. Thankfully, unlike that one, this one has actual shots of the creature, good characters, and really creepy atmosphere. Plus, it's not just a giant bird, but an intelligent humanoid owl monster – the infamous Owlman from U.K. lore (think the Mothman, but much more malevolent). I also really like the idea of a Paranormal Team investigating a supposed haunting hot spot and instead finding something completely different but equally as terrifying. The final scenes in the congregation room of the Gothic church are among the best this season has to offer when it comes to creepy stuff. Episode Rating:10/10

Episode 10: Swamp Creature – A couple Wildlife Researchers and their guide get lost in the thick dense swamplands of Louisiana and it soon becomes clear that not only are they lost, but they're also being hunted...hunted by the infamous Honey Island Swamp Monster, a savagely territorial humanoid Sasquatch or Skunk Ape-like creature with webbed reptile feet and accompanied by one hell of an awful smell.

This is the Bigfoot-esque episode I had wanted the previous Bigfoot episode to be like (though it's more like Florida's Skunk Ape then a traditional Sasquatch, but the two are close enough). No superhero woodland critters here, no sir! A group of people lost in the wilderness, catching glimpses of a smelly hairy creature stalking them, they hear some howls in the air, and then when they set up camp for the night, the beast aggressively attacks, giving us one of my favorite episode climax scenes yet seeing as how whenever I went camping as a child I would alwaysimagine some dark savage creature ripping open the side of the tent and attacking us. This is the kind of episode that this show was made for, and it's too bad that it took until it's second Bigfoot-esque episode to give us something as atmospheric and creepy as this. Fans of the Season 1 DVD cover art, take note, as this is the episode that goes with that cover art. Episode Rating:10/10

Episode 11: Megaconda – A pair of animal activists break into a downtown warehouse that they think is being used to store and transport illegal live animal trading, and while they were correct in their assumptions, one of the animals – a gigantic abnormally large, and hungry, anaconda escapes its confines and picks up the scent of the animal activists.

Gigantic monstrous snakes aren’t just from Jennifer Lopez horror movies, there are tons of evidence out there that such beasts exist, especially with Anacondas since they just keep growing exponentially until they die. In terms of pop-up facts for these episodes I was actually quite surprised with just how much info was delivered with this one. This is a topic I myself researched for a school project way back in high school and a lot of what I had put into that paper had actually been touched upon in this episode as well, so it's a great 'Giant Snake Lore 101' episode. As for an entertaining episode? Well let's just say this season set has better episodes, but also (thanks to the Thunderbird and first Bigfoot episodes) also has worse episodes too. It's just that with all these pop-up facts and real footage and photos dealing with jungle encounters, I was expecting a jungle-based episode, not the entire thing to take place in a random warehouse in the middle of the city - It just kind of ruined the believability a bit for me, especially when you add in the fact that there are supposed to be dozens of captured exotic animals in this place, yet not one single animal is making any kind of noise, not even when a dog gets in and starts barking. It also doesn't really make much sense as to why the activists would be filming all this, since the footage would work against them if caught, not to mention that part way through they have to switch tapes in the camera because the first one gets taken by a security guard and that second tape eventually gets lost and then destroyed at the very end...so how were we able to see that second tape's footage exactly? This is an episode that totally falls apart once you start thinking about it for even a minute. However, it was still pretty entertaining/creepy just how much one of the actors in this episode looked identical to a young George Clooney, and I'd be lying if I said it wasn't pretty fun seeing people getting chased by a giant anaconda, feeling almost like a 19-minute Anaconda sequel, even if most everything in it didn't make sense or add up at all. Episode Rating:4/10

Episode 12: Hellhound – A group of goth teens, hanging out in a graveyard, are filming the initiation of a new member into their group, but the prank they planned to pull during the initiation goes horribly wrong when a ghostly black Hellhound with glowing red eyes shows up to take everyone down...to Hell.

This episode was one of the surprise hits for me. When it started off with a group of goth teens, I really wasn't expecting much. To my surprise though, this episode had some of the better acting out of the entire season, plus it was the episode where we got to see the creature-of-note most clearly and most often – we see it multiple times and almost every time was a nice long, solid look at it, where-as most episodes at most all we get is a very quick glimpse or outline for a second or two and that's it for the whole episode. Plus, who doesn't get creeped out by being stalked throughout a graveyard at night by a mysterious and vicious black dog? For an episode I wasn't expecting much from, this one quickly became one of my favorites, with some pretty genuinely frightening moments throughout and a really nice unexpected twist ending. Episode Rating: 10/10

Episode 13: Mothman – A man's old school home videos from during the rash of sightings of the mysterious Mothman leading up to the infamous Point Pleasant bridge collapse, as well as the following police interrogation of said man make up the bulk of this episode.

Honestly, there's not really much to say on the Mothman creature. Chances are, if you're interested in this show you probably already are the type of person to know most of what there is to know when it comes to The Mothman of Point Pleasant. As for the episode itself, I was actually expecting it to be a bit of a cop-out, with a new Mothman sighting and very little, if anything, to do with the original events. Suffice to say I was pleasantly surprised when the episode was actually from the POV of footage from the original Mothman sightings and Point Pleasant events of 1967, complete with an old grainy black and white filter over most of the video to make it appear old, plus tons of actual news footage of the real tragic event. As a Mothman fan, this episode was quite accurate to the myths and I appreciate the level of effort they put in to make the video seem oldschool as well. Equal parts family drama, police procedural, disaster flick, and monster movie, this episode is full of meat on it's bones and has a little bit of something for everyone.

Unfortunately a lot of it comes a bit undone by the dreadful acting, espespecially during the FBI Investigation scenes. Not quite as bad as what it was like in Cave Demons, but a pretty close second. Also, the majority of this episode is actually the previously-mentioned stock news footage and photos of the real event, and not quite so much new originally-shot footage so it comes across almost more like a mini-documentary then it does a fictional faux-found footage episode. Episode Rating:6/10

Episode 14: Death Worm – Two thrill-seeking young adult friends participate in a Sports Enthusiast reality show race where at one point they find themselves ATVing through the Gobi Desert, and soon get turned around and lost in one of the most dangerous and inhospitable locations of the world. As if that wasn't enough, once darkness falls they also run afoul the famous creatures of myth, the Mongolian Death Worms - mythical large aggressive worms that can spit acid and shoot electrical charges great distances.

While I probably would have picked one of the slightly better episodes to be the Season 1 finale, this one wasn't too bad itself. The acting was pretty strong, there was some good ATV footage for those who like sports, there was real danger to be had even without the mythical creatures-of-note by way of being lost in the Gobi Desert, and then when the Death Worms themselves do show up, it just adds another layer of danger to everything. Unfortunately it's also one of those episodes were you pretty much never get even so much as one quick look at the creatures and pretty much all of their attacking happens either just off-screen or just under the surface of the sand (although that final shot of a half dozen 'bumps' in the sand moving quickly toward the main character from all directions was pretty effective). All in all a pretty decent episode, but not the one I would have chosen to use as the Season Finale episode. Episode Rating: 7/10

So as you can tell, on a whole I really enjoyed the first season of this low budget Animal Planet show. Sure, there were some stinkers in there but there were far more Good and Great episodes to be found. My one big nitpick overall though is that the camera footage, regardless of source, always looked the same quality. Whether it be from a professional HD movie-making camera or some little kid's phone camera, the quality and HD smoothness was always the same and that can kind of take you out of the realistic mood they were going for here. The only exception to this was the Mothman episode where they purposely went out of their way to make the footage look old and crappy, and I very much appreciated that and kind of wish they had done little tricks like that more often to add some variety to the camera qualities.

If you can believe it, there are actually people out there that think this show is real. I fail to see how anyone this day in age can believe that found-footage movies and shows are real. Not only are most of the effects here (what 5-second quick looks we get at them) quite low budget and terrible, but the acting is totally unbelievable as well for most of the episodes, plus if these kinds of things were real, they would be classified as snuff films and wouldn't be allowed to be shown anyway. With that said, there is some truth to these episodes, by way of the real Talking Head interviews, newspaper clippings, and news footage, but they never actually deal with the plot of the episodes themselves, but more-so as just in general the creature-of-note or some other lightly-related aspect of the episode. The actual events themselves of the episodes, I assure you, are 100% fiction. Hell, the episodes even begin and end on the words 'This episode is based on the possibility that these creatures may exist' which is a round-about fancy way of saying 'These events are fiction.'

For such a cheap price (I got this 2-disc set for less than 7 bucks), if you're a fan of Found Footage B-Movies than you really can't go wrong with this DVD set of Lost Tapes Season 1. At 14 episodes, you're bound find at least something you like in the bunch, and at only 19 minutes each, even the less-than-good ones pass by quickly and don't seem quite so bad in the greater scheme of the season as a whole. Hell, you even get some Special Features which I wasn't expecting - a nice large handful of scenes from most of the episodes that had been cut for time, some more interesting then others but all worth a look if you enjoy the show.

7/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Skinwalker Ranch (2013)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company: DeepStudios

Runtime: 80 mins

Format: Itunes

Plot: A scientific research team investigates and documents the supernatural phenomena surrounding the disappearance of a cattle rancher's 10 year-old son. Inspired by true events that shocked the paranormal community around the world.

Review: I always say in my reviews how much I love the Found Footage genre, in theory (I enjoy the concept immensely, but of course there are always some major stinkers like with every sub-genre). What I haven’t talked about though, but those who know me in real life already know quite well, is that I'm also obsessed with alien abduction and UFO movies (and the whole real-life phenomenon in general, really). There have been some great ones in my time – Fire in the Sky, Incident in Lake County, Dark Skies, and SyFy's 20 hour mini-series Taken are but a few examples of my favorites, however there have also been some major crap out there – The 4th Kind, The Forgotten, and Communion to name a few (I know that last one is a controversial opinion, but while I loved the book, I found the movie boring as shit).

Skinwalker Ranch is a real-life location I'm quite familiar with via my own researching and readings, but it's also been showcased on plenty of popular paranormal TV shows as well, so anybody who is even remotely interested in this topic probably already knows all about it, but for those who don't it's a cattle ranch and accompanying large property in Utah that seems to be the epicenter of just about every kind of supernatural activity you can think of: Ghosts and spirits, werewolves, Sasquatch, aliens and UFOs, chupacabras – you name it, this place has history with it, and a lot of it is not just word of mouth but there has been quite a lot of documented evidence for some of these things as well. I actually had no idea a movie was being made based around this location and it's weird events until last week, and I still had no idea it was due out this soon until I started seeing it listed on Itunes and other VOD services this morning, so since I love the topic and since Halloween is tomorrow, I figured this would be the perfect opportunity for a Halloween-themed night of watching what seemed to be a creepy found footage movie in Skinwalker Ranch and then posting up a review of it as a Halloween treat to all my readers!

Within the first several minutes I was surprised to see so many recognizable faces in this movie. Most of them are names you probably wouldn't know to hear them, but their faces you would automatically recognize, mostly as recurring guest spots from various TV shows. The one that stood out to me the most though was the inclusion of Erin Cahill, who I know best from the classic Time Force season of Power Rangers (one of the better seasons), as the Pink Ranger and leader of that season's team. Sadly, this kind of casting actually works against the movie. Being a Found Footage movie, it's entire gimmick rests on giving you the illusion that it's actual footage from a real event, played up even more by the unneeded opening text scrawl that explains how, where, and why this 'lost' footage was found. That entire illusion is totally undone by filling your cast with familiar faces that you can pinpoint from any number of popular TV shows and bit parts in famous movies. It also hurts that, Erin Cahill aside, the acting is surprisingly atrocious and comes across exactly as that – ACTING. Right off the bat, these two aspects completely take you out of the moment of pretty much any given scene and ruin the illusion that the movie sets out to attempt by being a Found Footage flick.

Unfortunately, even if those two aspects had been done right, the movie still wouldn't have been very good. Another 'Golden Rule' of Found Footage movies that Skinwalker Ranch not only breaks but utterly destroys, is that there's absolutely no subtlety, escalation or build-up to any of what happens here. By 15 minutes in they just dump you into the thick of the attempted-creepiness with no build-up or warning whatsoever, and thus it looses so much of its impact. And that seems to just be a hint of how this movie would continue to conduct itself during its entire runtime. There's a reason you wait all movie to see the shark in Jaws or the raptors in Jurassic Park. There's a reason that Paranormal Activity waits so long to actually start showing you some paranormal activity and then when it finally does, it's only little bits here and there, until it slowly builds up to an all-out assault on the senses for a total nerve-wracking final fifteen minutes. This movie has none of that build-up, it just drops you into the thick of it early-on and then kind of stays on that level for the next hour and a bit, without escalating the scares at all; This movie did not get the chance to be nearly as effective as it wanted to be or should have been by deciding to skip that slow build.

Another perfect example of this is during one scene you see a fully-formed ghostly figure of a boy walk by one of the cameras, with no heart-pounding build-up or subtlety about it whatsoever. In a Paranormal Activity movie you'd probably get a door slowly creaking open on its own in the background behind the character that they don't notice, and a slight shadow flicker that you may or may not have seen. Here, it's just: BAM, in your face full-bodied apparition Ghost Boy walking by the camera with no subtlety to be found. Now repeat that kind of approach for pretty much every 'scare' in the movie.

There are a few small aspects I enjoyed though, that I wish had been used in a better movie instead of wasted in this one. The research team that is the focus of the movie, I enjoyed the fact that it was made up of people from totally different professions and backgrounds, i.e. not just some ghost-hunting paranormal research group, but experts in their own various fields of study that come together to help figure out what's going on. In addition to that I also loved the inclusion of parts of this taking place during a thunder storm. It's only a small thing, but it goes a long way to adding an extra layer of atmosphere, and it's something that, oddly enough, is rarely incorporated by Found Footage movies, which considering how easy of a mood-setter thunderstorms are, you'd think they would be the go-to atmosphere device for cheap Found Footage flicks. There's also a short portion of the movie that centers around a werewolf-like beast creature, and I love me some werewolf action so suffice to say I enjoyed that part a bit (but even then, that portion was undone by the terrible cheap-looking cave system that was very obviously a quickly-made movie set and didn't look like real cave walls in any manner), and I am glad that it came back and played a part in the climax action.

Other then those things...um...well I suppose the movie, on a whole, looked nice in terms of visual style and came across very polished (I'm sure it'll really pop nicely on BluRay) and it also did a good job of keeping the motion sickness effect in check, so if that kind of thing normally bothers you than you should be fine for that with this one for the most part.

Yeah, that's pretty much it.

I've seen a lot of my peers over the last day or so praising Skinwalker Ranch up and down the wazoo, and personally I just don't understand it at all. In my eyes it's nowhere near deserving of the praise I'm seeing everywhere for it, especially when these very same people have bashed Paranormal Activity and countless other Found Footage movies that I personally think are done way better than this.

If you want a Found Footage movie that actually works hard at trying to take you out of the proper mood that it needs you in, this is the one you should check out. Otherwise, I highly recommend you give Skinwalker Ranch a skip. If you want a creepy and atmospheric Found Footage movie that will actually have your nerves doing loop-de-loops, just shoot me a message and I can recommend a good few titles that are all way better than this giant heap of a disappointment.

2/10  rooms in the Psych Ward

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Europa Report (2013)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company: Outpost Studios

Runtime: 90 mins

Format: Itunes

Plot: An international crew of astronauts undertake a privately-funded groundbreaking mission to search for life on Jupiter's fourth largest moon, Europa.

Review: Europa Report was one of those movies I had heard of and knew about the existence of, but other then it's title and very basic premise, I stayed away from any other word on it because it felt to me like one of those movies that the least you know about it going in, the better it will be.

As for it's plot, anybody familiar with the classic sci-fi novel 2010: Odyssey Two (sequel to the even more classic 2001: A Space Odyssey), will already be pretty familiar with it. In that novel (not the movie adaptation of it, since that left this part out) there's one chapter that talks about Chinese astronauts landing on one of the moons of Jupiter, the ice-covered moon Europa, to search for fresh flowing water to convert into fuel or some such (memory is shaky on that, at best) and of course things go very very wrong, they run afoul of some major issues, and get attacked by a pretty creepy unexpected assailant that had been dormant in the ice. Now I wouldn't go so far as to say that this movie is a full-on adaptation of that chapter of the book, but I will say that at the very least it was heavily inspired by it as there are quite a large number of similarities. Suffice to say, if you enjoyed that said chapter in 2010: Odyssey Two, then you'll more then likely enjoy Europa Report. Another, much quicker way to describe this movie could also be to simply say that it's the 2012 found footage space horror movie Apollo 18, but actually done right.

Just like Apollo 18, Europa Report is also shot in the 'Found Footage' style of filmmaking that we here at Watching Full Movie Online Free tend to love when done right (something that Apollo 18 most certainly was not). This is a movie, especially due to its low budget, that actually benefited quite well from this style; From the tightly claustrophobic but bright confines of the spaceship interiors to the vastly beautiful but shadowed icy Europa landscape, the 'from the camera' perspective really helps aid in making you feel like you're there, exploring with these characters, every step of the way. It also helps that the camera perspective angle, similar to another recent found footage movie The Bay, comes from multiple different sources and isn't just from one hand-held shaky home video camera. With this being the first attempt to send humans into deep space, there's stationary cameras positioned all over the interior as well as exterior of the ship itself, in addition to helmet cams in the spacesuits - after all, they would want everything on such a momentous mission to be recorded and meticulously documented, so it actually makes sense for this movie to be from that kind of P.O.V. Also, again much like in The Bay, the movie itself plays more like a fictional documentary on this mysterious and unexplainable event, with the footage that makes up the 'found footage' part of the narrative being shown throughout this documentary as part of that, mixed in alongside other documentary tropes such as Talking Head interviews, dramatic background music, news footage, and some overlaid narrations. The only thing I don't really like about this approach, is that it very often takes you out of the moment in the actual found footage, after it worked so hard to draw you in, to cut to more of the documentary stuff like the Talking Head interviews and news footage, thus loosing much of the impact that the tension-filled and atmospheric found footage parts would have otherwise had.

Now, I'm no scientist or space travel expert by any means, but continuing on with the realistic way that the found footage approach was incorporated, it also seemed to me like a hell of a lot of thought and extra effort went into this movie to make it as scientifically accurate as possible when it came to the technology, the space flight, and how certain things worked in space and on Europa - all those kinds of finer details seemed quite meticulous and realistic, which if that was indeed the case, then hats off to the makers for going that extra mile. Usually when a movie focuses so much on being scientifically accurate it kind of forgets that it needs to be enjoyable as well, but this one I felt was the perfect mix of the two, which only added to the realism.

Starring in this little sci-fi/thriller, we have Embeth Davidtz, who played the medieval hottie love interest from Army of Darkness, as the lead scientist on Earth in charge of this privately-funded program and is the source of the main Talking Head interview that the movie keeps cutting to, in addition to Dan Fogler playing another respected head scientist, which is certainly coming a long way from his hilariously role of the immature Hutch on Fanboys. Moving onto the main crew of the deep space mission, we have Michael Nyqvist, who is most famous for playing Mikael Blomkvist in the original Swedish version of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy, Sharlto Copley from the excellent low budget District 9, and Karolina Wydra who played a recurring guest star on the TV shows House and True Blood. There are a few others on the space crew, but that covers all the people that the average viewer would probably recognize and know.

As for those members of the space crew, drifting through the empty void of space for a couple years while they traveled, stuck in such a small and confined ship, it was great (and again, realistic) seeing their mental states slowly deteriorate even before they reach their destination of Europa. Actually, by the point we're first introduced to them at the start of the movie, they're all already at various points down the slope of depression and having tensions growing between them, due to their tight confines and total isolation from society, nay from Earth, for so long. We do end up going back and forth several times during the movie, so we get bits and pieces at a time as to how the events leading up to this point, but it was still a different and quite effective way to start the movie off and introduce us to our main cast.

Some could also complain (and they wouldn't really be wrong) that the movie has a very slow build and thus, could be perceived as boring. I can totally see that, however I didn't personally find that it affected me in that way at all. To me, it uses that slow build masterfully in order to let us grow accustomed to these characters and build an underlying tension that you almost don't even realize is being built until you get to a point where it starts coming to the forefront more. Make no mistake, this movie is very much a sci-fi-set character study first, watching the effects that being trapped on a small ship out in space for years, so far away from home and only with the same few people around, has on a person, and then the movie is everything else second, so don't go into it expecting some non-stop flashy blood and gore horror flick because this could not be the further from that. In addition to watching how these characters interact and deal with the day to day life in such a situation, the growing and continuous sense of awe and discovery throughout the movie, especially once they finally land on Europa, also helped to pass the time for me, as it just gives you so much to feel excited for, almost as if you really were watching a real documentary on such a discovery.

Now I don't want to really spoil a whole lot here since, as I said at the top, this is the kind of movie that the less you know about it going in, the better, but there is one last topic I want to touch on ever so briefly. The one bit of info I tried looking for on this movie beforehand but couldn't find a solid answer to was: Are there any sort of alien creatures in this movie? Well, without spoiling too much, I'll just say that they do indeed find something. But don't expect that to be a driving force of the movie, because it really isn't; Technical problems with the ship, compounded by growing mental issues of some of the crew, mixed in with the usual dangers of long distance space travel and exploring a new planet for the first time take up the bulk of the things that this deep space crew end up facing during this mission. The one mysterious thing that isdiscovered on Europa seems more like an after-thought to please those touchy viewers that need something like that or 'this movie sucks' to them, however that's not to say that it's non-effective, because it very much is. The last little portion of the movie when it starts dealing with this thing, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't just as enthralled as I was during any other part of the movie, if not even slightly more-so, but it plays such a minor role overall that it's almost not even worth mentioning.

Yes, the movie is a bit slow for the majority of its runtime, but slow doesn't automatically equal boring, as there were plenty of things happening that fully kept my interest. Add to that some good performances, a pretty realistic approach and attention to detail, a nice sense of awe and wonder, and some truly terrifying nail-biting tension at some parts, and we have another winning Found Footage flick right here. It's only slightly brought down by some aspects of the documentary approach that have a tendency to take you out of the moment at times when I would really have rather just stayed encompassed by the moment. Still, when that's the only real complaint I have with a movie, then it's a pretty safe bet to say it's one damn fine movie. For those who were hoping for Apollo 18 to be much more then it ended up being, Europa Report is excellent at filling that void, just as long as you are prepared for the slower pace and you aren’t expecting some gory edge-of-your-seat non-stop action/horror thrill ride.

9/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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The Dyatlov Pass Incident/Devil's Pass (2013)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company: Future Films

Runtime: 96 mins

Format: Imported DVD

Plot: A group of film students go on a trek to investigate the true life mystery of nine Russian skiers who befell an unexplained death while skiing in the Russian mountains in 1959. To this day, their deaths have been one of the most bizarre unsolved mysteries of the 20th century.

Review: The Dyatlov Pass Incident (Or simply Devil's Pass as it's been renamed in America according to IMDB) is a fictional movie using real events for its backdrop. The real life event known as The Dyatlov Pass Incident is quite possibly one of the most spine-tingling, creepy, horrifying, and mysterious incidents to plaque the Fortean world, and to top it all off it still remains 100% completely unsolved to this very day.

I first heard about the real-life event on an episode of the excellent Mysterious Universe podcast a couple years ago and instantly had to go online and read up on it as much as I could, and suffice to say, the things I read pretty much kept me up all night, terrified; short version is that in the 1950's a group of experienced Russian skiers went missing and when a search party found their camp site, they discovered that the tents had been ripped open from the inside, the skiers were all found at various distances away in bare feet and only half-dressed, some with broken ribs, others with skulls crushed, one missing her tongue, and none had any external injuries like bruises or cuts – only internal ones with no external impact points to have caused such injuries. Some of the bodies also had slight levels of radiation coming from them, with all of this culminating in absolutely no solid answers. Various speculation includes mundane explanations such as an avalanche and false mass hysteria, while others include some more interesting reasons such as secret military testing or having been attacked by another group of people, right to some more 'out there' things such as aliens/UFOs, angry spirits, and savage Yetis, and the really weird thing is that oddly enough almost all of those have at least someinteresting evidence to back them up, but all also have noteworthy detractors for them as well. The really curious thing to it all though, and it only adds to the mystery, is that the majority of hard evidence discovered for this case has been deemed Top Secret and Classified by the Russian Government and has never been released to the public, with the one sole researcher to publish a book on all this having died shortly after in a questionable car accident.

Now that is just a very quick summery. One article in particular that I found, this one right here, gives a very in-depth and thorough look at the event and I highly recommend going and reading that before watching this movie...hell, even before continuing on with this review. It's a bit of a long read, but wellworth it and it's almost a Must-Read in order to fully understand my anticipation and eventual feelings on this movie. My only issue with it is the author of that article states his own personal opinion as fact in a few instances, and I disagree with that practice pretty heavily. Other then that though, it's a very engaging read. Also, if you want a much shorter (albeit still decently long) article, Mysterious Universe has their own up right here, but I still recommend going to that first article at some point as well because it is much more thorough and has been updated with some extra and newer information since the time of the Mysterious Universe article.

Ok, so you got that done now? You're back and ready for the rest of the review? Ok, good. Hopefully you're just as captivated by that as I was and now you can see why I was so interested in this whole affair, and it's something that ever since I started reading up on it I've been saying deserves to have a really good, well-made, creepy-as-hell movie made based off of it, so I got pretty damn excited last year when I heard that one was actually being made. However, as more and more news came out on it, I got a little bit disappointed when I read that it would not actually be a movie based off the event itself, but rather a fictional story set within modern day that just uses the incident as a backdrop. I was still excited because I figure some really good stuff can still be done with that, but it wasn't quite what I had been hoping for. Add to that, it's also found footage as well. Now, I love found footage horror flicks quite a bit, but there are some movies I feel don't need the treatment and would be perfectly fine (if not better) as a traditionally-shot movie (The Dinosaur Project was one such movie), and this was one that I initially thought the same thing about when reading this news. Finally, the last bit that had me worried was that it was being made by Renny Harlin, a mostly-action director that I'm not a big fan of outside of Die Hard 2: Die Harder, Deep Blue Sea, and the terribly underrated Cutthroat Island, especially since his only other forays into horror were the abysmal Exorcist: The Beginning and the forgetful Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master. (Side note: I do believe this is by far the longest intro I ever wrote for one of my reviews...)

Despite my growing doubts though, I should have trusted in Renny Harlin's self-professed obsession with the original mystery, because he did a pretty good job (well mostly, but we'll get to that in due time). In this fictional follow-up we have a group of university film students who are interested in the original mystery going to Russia in the middle of winter to shoot a documentary and walk the same route the original team did in the 50's, trying to recreate some of the events that led to whatever happened to them back then. Of course, as you can probably guess, they find everything they go there looking for, plus tons more, and it is not exactly a good thing for them. These central characters are all played by mostly-unknowns, with most of them having little to no previous acting experience. Because of that, their acting leaves quite a bit to be desired and is outright bad in a few key scenes that would otherwise be creepy if not for the bad acting taking you out of it.With that said, they're still serviceable enough most of the time and where they really shine is that they all seem to have genuinely good chemistry together; Even when the characters are arguing and fighting, these actors all play quite well off of one another, which also helps bring some much-needed comedic levity to the whole affair just before the shit starts hitting the fan and it becomes a non-stop edge of you seat spook fest.

Most of that spook action comes to us via a slowly growing sense of uneasiness, starting with some electronic malfunctions, escalating to strange footprints around their camp site, going a bit further when they find a severed tongue, and then only getting more batshit stranger from there, topping it off with one awesome scene in particular of a nighttime avalanche where both the visual CGI as well as the audio SFX for it were great, realistic, and quite frankly pretty damn frightening. Actually, even removing the avalanche scene and looking at just the snow-covered wilderness, snow in general seems to always add an extra level of atmosphere and tension to a horror movie and I'm not really sure why. Even in not-so-good ones it manages to raise the atmosphere up a couple notches, especially if the snow is currently falling in said scene (I'm still waiting for a Friday the 13th movie set at Crystal Lake during the winter – I think that would be pretty damn awesome to see). It also helped that this snow wasn't just some sound stage or fake snow set up in someone's backyard property, oh no, the movie was actually filmed out in the middle of the Russian wilderness in the middle of winter (though sadly not at the actual location of the real events, I believe), which means real snow which in turn means it was genuinly cold for the actors when they were filming, so you can actually see their breath in most of the scenes which makes things more authentic and portrays the cold that much more realistically, and something most movies set in the snow tend to overlook because it's usually just fake snow.

Where the movie lost me however, was when it started to rapidly fall apart toward the end and they kind of leave the whole mythology of the real incident behind to go off in their own direction for the remainder of the movie, at which point it did several things I didn't really like: First, it took a very sharp and unexpected turn into some kind of weird badly-CGIed monster movie that popped up out of nowhere and didn't even have any sort of hints throughout or build-up during the movie to get to this point, they just randomly threw in some very bad CGIed monsters for the sake of it. Along those lines another aspect of this last bit that I didn't like is that, along with these monsters, they also threw a lotof other random things at you out of the blue and expect you to just buy it. Somehow this movie manages to touch on weird mutant monsters, The Philadelphia Experiment (another classic mystery that I love quite a bit, just not randomly shoehorned into this movie), The Mothman sightings of Point Pleasant, time travel, teleportation, weird silvery warp hole thingies, and a few other things I won't go into, and the movie jams all of that into the last half an hour, all entirely out of nowhere, to the point where they totally left behind the entire point of the movie and almost never even touch on the actual Dyatlov Pass Incident again, coming across like Renny Harlin ran out of time on the script for the movie so decided to randomly toss in the third act of another completely unrelated movie script just to give the first some form of third act. That last half an hour really doesn't feel like the same movie as the first hour, at all, and to top it off it also feels like he forgot to somehow tie all that wackiness back into the actual Incident that the movie is based off of because it pretty much doesn't even come back around to it anymore after that point.

Adding to all that, I wasn't that big a fan of their ultimate explanation for the original Dyatlov Pass Incident. Then again, when you've been obsessed with a 50-year old mystery like this, I suppose no matter what explanation they went with it probably would have been a let down either way and couldn't possibly live up to that kind of expectation pressure. Still, the direction they go was a bit of a pretty sharp turn and a giant leap into a totally unexpected direction. A direction that, as mentioned previously, randomly included monsters that looked like they could have been birthed by Golum from Lord of the Rings, and done so by very distractingly bad CGI.

I still want a movie about the actual original incident itself at some point. A movie version of that, I imagine, would be something akin to Event Horizon, but out in the middle of snow-covered wilderness during a snowstorm. With that said, I was actually pretty impressed by how faithful 80% of this movie was to the original events (or at least what we know or theorize about them). Sure, there are some details it fudges a bit and takes some liberties on, and some others they rush through or skim over a bit too quickly for my tastes, but for the most part it mentions just about all the major (and even some of the more minor) aspects in some capacity, delivering a frighteningly uneasy and intense little horror/mystery flick. It also acts as a great intro to those wanting to know a bit more about the real event, and it shows that Renny Harlin really is a fan of the original mystery as he proclaimed during a recent interview, leading him to want to do a movie about it.

However, it's that other 10% that brings the movie down quite a bit as that final half an hour makes the movie quickly go from being an amazingly effective, tension-filled, atmospheric movie to just plain silly as it devolves into a CGI-fest monster flick and kind of shoves a whole bunch of weird random things right into your face and then beats you over the head with them, leaving behind all the uneasy creepy subtlety that made the rest of the movie up to that point so strong. In addition to that, the ending doesn't even match up with the beginning at all; The movie starts off with the news covering the search teams trying to find these missing kids and then eventually finding this footage and playing it, yet the way the movie ends it totally ignores all that and, well, not to spoil anything but its kind of impossible for anyone to have found this footage, or at the very least in the way that the beginning of the movie implied anyway.

While The Dyatlov Pass Incident played in Russian theaters and is out on DVD now in various places of the world, it's actually due out over here in Canada and the U.S. under the name Devil's Pass on August 23rd for a very limited theatrical run and (while not yet confirmed) probably a VOD release around the same time as well, since that seems to be how these limited theatrical runs tend to go this day in age.

The Dyatlov Pass Incident (Or Devil's Pass) is certainly worth checking out, especially as a ' Dyatlov Pass Incident 101' for the real event. However, personally, if you're the kind of person that doesn't need everything explained for you then I'd say you're better off turning the movie off around the hour mark or shortly after (whenever the main characters get chased off into an abandoned underground bunker) and just assume the camera footage cuts off there. What you'd be left with is a MUCH stronger and far more effective movie then the one you'll be turning off a half hour later. While I was watching I was planning on giving this movie either an 8/10 or a 9/10, but what the movie very quickly descends into was just a total slap in the face and made me outright hate everything after that first hour.

5/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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The Bay (2012)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company: Automatik Entertainment

Runtime: 84 mins

Format: DVD

Plot: On July 4, 2009 a deadly menace swept through the quaint seaside town of Claridge, Maryland, but the harrowing story of what happened that Independence Day has never been told - until now. The authorities believed they had buried the truth about the tragedy, but a reporter has emerged with footage revealing the cover-up and an unimaginable killer: a mysterious parasitic outbreak. Told from the perspective of those who were there and saw what happened, The Bay unfolds over 24 hours though people's iPhones, Androids, 911 calls, webcams, and whatever else could be used to document the nightmare in Claridge.

Review: I love found-footage horror movies, so I try to watch any and all new ones when they come out, but The Bay specifically I had been anticipating pretty heavily after hearing some excellent word of mouth on it out of last year's TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival). While it took me a bit longer to get around to it then I would have liked, luckily I was able to catch it recently on DVD, and suffice to say 80-odd minutes later I found myself thinking twice about going for that next glass of water...

In The Bay, an entire small island town during a 4th of July celebration weekend gets infected via the drinking water by small parasitic creatures that eat you from the inside out, mutated to a larger size due to the Government-tampered water supply, and we watch as the fun-loving celebrations slowly descend into panic and utter chaos.

What struck me almost right away here as a pretty ingenuous twist on the overdone found footage genre, was that it actually wasn't so much a found footage movie in the traditional sense as it was a fictional documentary that incorporated found footage elements within it. It has a survivor of the events, after the fact, going back and making a documentary on the events that befell this small coastal town, since the Government and mainstream media have been failing to report on it, and she's making this documentary from edited-together footage of this event from all sorts of different sources – home video cameras, security footage, police car cameras, news broadcasts, recorded phone conversations, webcam chats, 911 calls - just dozens upon dozens of different sources, most of which are professional and thus that means very little shakey-cam stuff for those of you who get headaches or motion sickness from that sort of thing.

Because of this approach, with footage from various multiple sources, both of the event itself as well as small signs leading up to it that hint at something not quite being right, the movie ended up being very creepy (even more so then most other found footage movies that are only from the POV of a single camera) because you start getting a sense of dread even before the characters realize anything is happening. You're given an uneasy suspenseful feeling right from the get go, and while the majority of the movie is a bit of a slow burn, it uses that time very well to slowly, but steadily, increase that feeling of unease and confusion. The movie, and by extension it's creepy factor, is helped along even more-so by the fact that the mutant parasitic creatures that are the cause of everything here – the Isopods – are actual real-life creatures that actually can get quite large in rare cases (seriously, Google Pictures that shit). Even though the movie itself is fictional, the horrific events depicted in it could very easily actually happen, making everything within all the more spine-tingling.

The biggest drawback that keeps you from getting fully invested however, is that aside from the reporter that's narrating the movie, there's not really any main characters to latch onto as everyone else is mostly just background people in various footage, but none really get any significant screen time. Hell, even the reporter lady herself wasn't in a whole lot of the actual 'found footage' stuff, and was completely absent from the final 20 minutes or so.

To be honest, I actually could have done with less of her present-day webcam chats with her boss, as well as her constant narration of everything happening on-screen, because that stuff sort of removed some of the tension by A, breaking it up and cutting in to take us out of what's happening in some otherwise really intense and creepy scenes, and B, outright spoiling things that were to come later on that would have been more of a surprise and more shocking had we not been expecting them. I would have preferred her to have a much stronger presence in the 2009-set footage and just cut out more, if not all, of her present-day webcam chat stuff.

I also wasn't a fan of the fact that there's no real climax to the movie - The movie builds the tension really well, culminating in a very creepy sequence where a family arrives to the town late in the evening only to find it empty of celebrations and dead bodies strewn all over the streets and no idea as to what's going on, but in terms of story structure it doesn't build up to anything at all and it kind of just...ends... and it leaves you feeling like the movie was over before it had even reached the final act.

Those few things aside though, The Bay is a highly enjoyable and quite creepy found footage movie, that acts as a bit of a refresher to an otherwise stale subgenre. This is one that I look forward to re-watching every once in awhile in the future, although it certainly will make you quite paranoid about ever drinking tap water again...

8/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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V/H/S/2 (2013)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company:  The Collective

Runtime: 93 mins

Format: Itunes

Plot: Searching for a missing student, two private investigators break into a house and find a large collection of VHS tapes. Viewing the horrific contents of each cassette, they realize there may be dark motives behind the student's disappearance.

Review: V/H/S/2 (formally titled the much better S-V/H/S) dropped last night at midnight on the Video on Demand channels and Itunes. I was hoping to stay up and watch it then, but due to time differences, 'dropped at midnight' actually meant about 4:30 am for me, soo... yeah, it kinda had to wait for the following day, plus I then wanted to wait for it to be dark out before I watched it, otherwise what would even be the point, am I right?

Anyway, V/H/S/2 starts on a similar wrap-around story as the first movie. This time around, a private Investigator and his girlfriend are hired to track down and find a missing delinquent teen and their investigation leads them to an old abandoned creepy house, which has contained within it a very large collection of old VHS tapes, of which (like the first movie) the following anthology stories are contained on. Overall this wrap-around segment was actually quite a bit better then the one in the first movie and had some nice genuinely creepy moments within it, as well as acts like an actual proper wrap-around story and doesn't just randomly end midway through the movie like the one in the first movie did. However one aspect of it really grinds my gears and annoyed me quite a bit – The teen they're looking for? Not one of the teens from the first movie's wrap-around segment like I was thinking it would be. The old creepy house he finds? Not the same one as the one in the first movie's wrap-around segment either. Despite being very similar to the first movie's, this movie's wrap-around portion is not related to the first movie's in any shape, way or form, making this movie 100% completely stand-alone and unconnected to the first movie. While I didn't like that portion of the first movie, it still would have been nice (and expected) for this movie to tie into that one in some way, preferably via the wrap-around stories, especially since this one's seems like it was initially written to do just that. Just seems like a pretty big missed opportunity to create a bit of background mythology, especially with a third movie having already been announced.

With that slight disappointment out of the way though, the first of the actual short stories deals with a man that gets a cybernetic eye to replace his lost eye, and the camera for this story comes from inside that eye. For reasons he doesn't understand, that new eye allows him to see ghosts, and he meets up with a girl who underwent the same experimental surgery to get her hearing back and likewise, it's allowed her to hear ghosts. Teamed up and trying to figure out what's going on, the two start getting assaulted by some very nasty ghosts. This story had a pretty great premise, with a few fun scenes and plenty of scares to go around. While it wasn't quite on the same level of unease as the first movie's opening segment, this one had quite a bit of jump scares to keep you on-edge. There are two aspects though that stop it from being great; The acting was distractingly bad, like SyFy Channel Original Movie of the Week level of bad, and was constantly taking me out of the moment and ruining some of the scenes that should have been way scarier then they were due to the acting. In addition, a lack of answers to pretty much anything that's going on also hurt it a bit. With some better actors and more time to fully flesh this segment out, this could have been one of the stronger stories here. As it is, it's still decent thanks to some great jump scares and creepy moments, and I was never bored or wishing it would just end already, but at the same time it's could really have benefited from some tune-ups.

Moving onto the second story, this one has a man with some kind of cam attached to his helmet as he goes for a bike ride in the woods, during which he gets bitten by a zombie and we follow around with him as he becomes a zombie himself and shambles around, attacking other people in the woods. I feel this segment thinksits being revolutionary and doing something new and unique that's never been done before (that's the vibe I get from watching it), however, this exact thing has been done countless times in dozens of homemade youtube videos and student projects that are online. And this version of it does nothing at all to set itself out from the pack and doesn't even attempt to bring anything new to the table. Chances are, even just reading this paragraph right now you can probably tell exactly how this segment plays out and can probably guess every single thing that happens in it, because it's just that generic. I find most anthology movies have an entry that you can just skip and the movie will be better off for you because of it. With the first V/H/S it was the invisible static man killer entry and for V/H/S/2, it's this one.

The middle story of this anthology is probably my top favorite of not only this bunch, but of both movies, and was brought to us by Gareth Evans, the guy who made the excellent The Raid: Redemption. A camera crew shooting a documentary is following a cult leader around on the Eve of the great 'passing over', an event that he and his followers believe will allow them to open the gates to 'Paradise' and cross over into that mythical realm. While this was easily my favorite and I could probably write a full-length review on just this segment alone, it's also the one I feel I should talk about the least just because the less you know about what happens in it, the better. This segment revels in the unexpected, and it should be watched knowing virtually nothing about it in order to get the full effect. All I'll say is that this story goes from 'normal' to 'bat shit WTF insane crazy' in about half of its runtime, and uses the other half to go from 'bat shit WTF insane crazy' to about twenty miles past that, so that by the time this segment is over you almost need to take a break and recuperate your sanity and nerves before moving on to the final story in the movie.

Which while this final story was still pretty good and I enjoyed it, its placement really should have been swapped with the previous one as I feel that would have been a muchstronger and way more impactful way to end the movie off. In this last story of the movie, we get a camera attached to a family dog while the foul-mouthed children of said family (which at times pleasantly reminded me a lot of the kids from movies like E.T., The Goonies, and Super 8, among others) play a prank on their older sister and her asshole boyfriend, which is followed by a counter-prank...at least until some white-skinned, black-eyed aliens show up to abduct everyone. There's really not much more to the plot of this one then that, and it's easily the shortest entry of the movie at only 15 minutes long, but as someone who is pretty obsessed with the whole alien/UFO/abduction phenomenon, I found this one pretty damn creepy in its own ways, and it makes me wish for more creepy horror movies to cover ground like this (such as Dark Skies, which did a decent job with a similar plot when that was released earlier this year). As I said previously though, this entry would have fitted much better if it happened earlier in the movie and the previous entry took place here, because as much as I personally liked this one and was pretty creeped out at moments, it doesn't even begin to come close to touching the previous entry, and thus it seems very confusing to me as to why they would place this one as the final short story of the movie as it's very much a one-note, simple, cookie cutter entry that, honestly, not a whole lot happens in it and it kind of just peeters out instead of ending on a bang like the last one. Then again, at only 15 minutes long, that doesn't really leave much room for many things to happen.

In my review of the first movie, I stated that one of the biggest faults for some of the individual stories was that there just wasn't enough time for the subject matter and a couple of them could have benefited greatly from a slightly longer runtime. The exact same can be said for some of these entries as well, which is made even more frustrating this time by the fact that it's a much shorter movie to boot. Granted, it has one less short story then the first movie did, but they could have used that as the perfect opportunity to fill in that missing space by extending the length of each of these stories by an extra ten minutes each (except for that stupid zombie one) instead of just shortening the overall movie's runtime. My biggest complaint about most of these stories is just that, much like with the final story of the first movie, there's just not enough time allowed for the subject matter, and just about each one could have benefited from being given slightly more screen time.

Luckily that's the only thing about the first movie that's made worse, however that mixed with the utterly confusing decision to make a very similar-but-not-connected wrap-around story, the placement of some of these stories, and that terrible zombie segment does lower my score of this one a bit. But that's ok, because unlike the first, there's plenty of score to go around here. Most of the short story segments were vastly improved from the ones in the first movie (With the exception of that zombie one, which I could have done without) making this movie an overall improvement over the first, and since it's in no way connected to it other then in name-only, you can even skip that one and just move right on to watching this much-better version of essentially the same movie. Plus, between abducting aliens, zombie viruses, killer ghosts, and Chaos Death Cults (among a few other surprises in there) there's such a wide range of horror movie topics here that pretty much everyone will find something to love.

Now if you could just take the best segments from V/H/S, and the best segments from V/H/S/2, and mix them together into their own anthology movie (and make sure they're put in an order that makes sense), then we'd have a really nice and solid horror anthology film.

7/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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