cjs6547 This movie breathes fresh life in the found-footage genre with some spazzy photography and creative cuts. It builds suspense beautifully - and keeps it there, so that you find yourself holding your breath for more than half the film! It takes a departure from clichéd jumpscares and other horror movie tropes and uses a formula that's not generic so that the final result leaves you unnerved and conscious of the silence of the night. The TRUE objective of a seasoned horror-addict, not those loud BOOs that give you a temporary adrenaline rush.The backstory is a bit weak, and character development lacking. A couple, Scott and Penny, take off from their city life to make a nature documentary. 'Don't you ever feel like leaving it all behind and running to nature?' Scott asks in the beginning, or something of the sort. No, we don't. Scott realizes pretty soon (in the first 5 minutes) that he doesn't either. And not a minute too soon. His exposure to the wilderness leads him and Penny straight to the door of Mr. Jones.Called Mr. Jones by (fans?), this is a guy in a mask and a cape living in isolation and leaving bits of what this movie's characters seem to consider 'art'. Yeah, nobody would consider that art, unless it came with references from an art college, an agent and a 20 dollar entrance fee.Penny is enchanted with what can only be described as creepy tribal tribute effigies, and so they instead make a documentary about Mr. Jones. This is when it gets scary (again, not a moment too soon).While the backstory doesn't hold up too well, my main issue with this movie is in two things: the switching front-to-back camera, and the ending. Other camera-work is simply riveting, but I don't know whose idea it was to turn found-footage into found-footage + cameraman's face. The face shots of a scared Scott lend little or nothing at all of value to the movie.Lastly, yes, the ending. It makes everything (all the nightmares) go away. That sort of dulls the horror. I was disappointed to know that Penny had been right all along and Mr Jones really WAS trying to protect them. It would have been so much fun instead if he was evil and they slowly lose their minds between dream and reality. But that's just my opinion.Definitely worth your time, if only for the scares that really work.

Addie Joy I believe the reason a lot of people dislike this movie is because it really isn't a conventional horror. It's nothing like Slenderman or the Blair Witch Project. But it's got themes that I find very enjoyable. It's disturbing more than it is scary, and it's so aesthetically pleasing that I found myself wanting to move into the woods too - at first. The fact that the main characters were nature photographers really sets up the movie to have some wonderful scenery. Penny and Scott were a beautiful couple, and I loved the portions of the movie where they were peaceful and happy together. You expect the movie to start out happy and then fly off the deep end, like most horror movies do, but this one doesn't do that. Rather, it's set on a gradual increase, from peaceful to stressed to scary to insane. That might bother some people, but I found it very pleasing, simply because it wasn't quite like most horror movies. I absolutely love the way the conflict was carried out. For the first half of the movie, you genuinely expect Mr. Jones to be the main antagonist. But as time goes on, and you see the way he interacts with the main characters, it doesn't feel that way anymore. In fact, at some point, we find that the real antagonist is more of a concept than a physical being. The way that was developed was completely unexpected for the viewer. Again, that might bother people - they want a real antagonist, like an alien or a ghost or Mr. Jones himself. But in this movie, the closest thing we have to a physical antagonist is actually the protagonists. It's a complex idea, and I find it to be beautiful. I usually don't like found-footage films. They seem to always have the same concept. However, this one really resonated well with me. The aesthetics are beautiful, the concept is complex, the characters are well-executed, and the scary aspect is psychologically disturbing. If I had to name what kind of movie this even is, I'd call it an Aesthetic Thriller.

begob A dreaming couple downsize to the woods, where they enter a nightmare.Huge amount of skill in the storytelling. The opening sequence has lovely dialogue between a couple travelling in a car (the out-of-range phone conundrum is dealt with in seconds), then the editing flicks brilliantly through the exposition.But this doesn't hit the bass note needed for horror. Or, as an earlier reviewer said, it doesn't click and it's hard to tell why. It feels like an exercise in horror, rather than a horror, and I really didn't react to any of the scenes with fear, although there was tension throughout. The writer/director probably prefers original drama, rather than genre - if not he should stick with advertising.It gets back to the problem of treating horror as metaphor. Horror has nothing to do with reality - it is a dreamworld where the bizarre is made literal. So in this case the stolen package has to be the core, has to be explained consistent with the dreamworld. Instead, it's treated as a symbol and we never find out what's inside. This is genre - it's that simple. David Lynch is an exception.So much to admire about this: writing, directing, editing, sound. And the actors were good. But not a good horror.

TheRedDeath30 A young man convinces his wife to give up everything so that they can move to a shack in the middle of nowhere that will enable him to film the best nature documentary ever. They discover that their neighbor may be an enigmatic artist named Mr. Jones who creates creepy scarecrows. As they dive deeper into the mystery than they should, they discover that Mr. Jones may be creating totems to protect them from the dream world and they may have just ruined that protection and unleashed nightmare forces upon them.What a great concept, right? I was drawn into what could have been a great movie, but ultimately doesn't have the creative forces behind it to bring that idea to any sort of reasonable fruition. It does start off pretty good. The acting from the only two real characters in the movie is pretty good for a low budget horror film, though we are not really given any background or development that truly makes us learn anything about these people so that we'll care about them down the road. They are just an anonymous couple who seem to have given up life to be artists. They discover Mr. Jones cabin fairly early on in the film and there's some promise there as the scarecrows are pretty effectively made and lend some atmosphere to things, though let's not pretend these are original in any way. They're essentially more twisted versions of the policeman scarecrow in CHILDREN OF THE CORN.The first big problem in the movie is the found footage style. I'm not a hate of found footage, like so many others seem to be and I do not think it makes a movie garbage right off the bat, but you have to be using it for a reason, and you have to be consistent with it to give it the right feel. There's no reason for this to exist as found footage. Nothing is gained by the pretense of this being filmed by the characters, rather than just admitting it's a movie. Worse, it's really inconsistently shot. There are voice-overs, text overlays to introduce characters in interviews and shots that just plain could not have been created by the characters' filming at all. It breaks up the illusion of "found footage" even more and destroys it pretty much. They would have been much better off just telling this as a straightforward narrative.The biggest problems with the movie come once things start getting strange. Basically, things are just getting strange for the sake of being strange featuring a lot of random imagery and sounds, quick cuts from shot to shot and scene to scene and nonsense storytelling. It quickly becomes very hard to tell what's going on, or for that matter to even see what's going on in a lot of shots. It's all done under the pretense of being "dreamlike", but the reality is that it's a convenient excuse to not have to actually tell much of a story, to not have to create an actual narrative that makes sense, to not have to back up your plot with any events that would support what happens. You can just fill your fun time with anything you want to and say "it's a dream". A 4-year old's scribbling may be images in their mind, but few of us know what the picture is supposed to be and that's basically what this movie is.It all leads to a climax that I'm sure the director thinks is very clever and people who want to feel artsy will tell you has some grand meaning to be discussed in length. It means nothing because nothing that happened in the movie proceeding it has any real value. Random images leading to a random conclusion. That is all.