Specter

Specter is yet another found footage film. While the genre has become vastly overpopulated with inferior efforts there have been some real gems here and there. Unfortunately this is not one of them. The first and biggest problem of the film are the characters or really the lack of character. The dil does nothing to help the audience develop the needed empathy for the protagonists for us to care about them. In fact in many cases it seems to go out of its way to make us not care. The lead of the film a fellow named Chase may or may not be a date rapist because of his drug use. He's had to return to his old home town because of the trouble he got in, but not having learned a lesson is looking for some exciting new drugs to try out with his friends even though he isn't sure how they will affect him. Why? Because he doesn't like who he is when he's sober...sheesh.As Chase gathers more of these drug culture users to him for the party in celebration of a coming tsunami to their seaside tourist town you just don't meet anyone you can identify with at all. The characters are vaguely defined at best, you get the overall sense of loser coming off most of them. Its like watching a bunch of really stoned high schoolers instead of a group of adults. Eventually the horror aspect of the film kicks in as several of the parties leave for town to continue the revelry while the mains stay at their original location. A few scary sounds, some earth tremors and some unviewably grainy jump scares later and the party decides to head for town as well to see whats going on. The alluded weirdness could be seen as an alien invasion but the whole movie could also be taken as a bizarre drug trip if not for the fact that we see everything trough a camera. So we have to take the insanity of this film at face value.Because all the principals are whacked out of their minds they don't react to the situations with anything like normalcy given the nature of the crisis. Which includes people covered in blood who appear and disappear almost before your eyes. A town devoid of any human life save for the odd maniacal person covered in blood (sometimes nude). Strange lights, silhouetted figures, earthquakes, flaming birds falling from the skies and tornados. And erie figures with glowing eyes stalking around. Its like the camera itself is on drugs showing us this distorted stream of consciousness mess. Now Im sure the filmmakers plan was to make some sort of strange and hallucinatory nightmare in the frame of things like Beyond The Black Rainbow, Liquid Sky, Antichrist or even The Serpent And The Rainbow but with aliens (maybe). Ultimately it fails, the film is a complete and utter mess even by found footage standards. Its got the rare creepy moments and visuals here and there but like the Slender Man game the creatures seems to short out the camera when close making the "scares" even more frustrating.Don't bother with this one.

I can't really say that I hated it (1 star) but I didn't really like it either. I'm not a fan of "found footage" and/or "paranormal research" type films, and had the description been a bit more accurate I probably wouldn't have watched it.I didn't think the acting was really bad...after all, these are not $1-million dollar actors. The parts didn't go beyond their acting abilities.The story line was somewhat believable: kids looking for drugs and alcohol for a party, taking the drugs, and freaking out when everything conceivable turns to crap. Tsunami and flooding were the cause for the party. But when the drugs turned out to be bad, there had to be a gun involved, with the scariest looking dude handling it. The party breaks up and the kids head to town for a bigger party, only to have their way blocked by a forest fire. The main characters go down through a tunnel to come out on the other side of the fire, only to find the town deserted, and the moon eclipsed by some unknown object. The most exciting part of the whole movie was watching the battery on the camera run down, and finally die just as the lead character was dragged off-screen by a Specter.

Like a supernatural Cloverfield on literal drugs. So what if it's a bit (okay, a lot) derivative? This is a found footage movie. Derivative is the name of the game. The movie starts out as two guys are looking to score some new drug to try out and film the results. Weak start to a movie with unlikable characters, right? But all the footage they're shooting makes up for it, with great visuals of flooded streets and background characters acting suspiciously. Meanwhile a series of natural disasters are occurring across the country, with our protagonists in a tsunami/heavy flooding situation. Do our protagonists care? Nope, there's an annual town celebration later that day and nothing is going to stop them from having a good night with their friends. So there's the premise of the movie. Then s**t gets weird. (Watch the trailer if you want any more spoilers than that.) It does take a while to get going, and it's not quite a 5/5 movie... But considering this is only the third review, and one of the reviews was by someone who didn't even watch it and the other was a one-word, one-star review, I've got to bump up the rating of this 4/5 star movie. It's worth a watch and, as I got into my fourth beer, really started to scare the crap out of me. (Yea, Ive bin drinkin, wat of it? *blaaarggh*)

I'm having trouble deciding what to say about this movie. I didn't like it, at all, but it wasn't poorly filmed and the acting was actually much better than I normally expect from what turned out to be a lousy premise otherwise poorly executed. Here's a hint. If you find yourself debating whether to give up on it part way through but tempted to hang in there hoping it will get better toward the end and you'll finally understand and get to see some closure, don't do it, click away. It doesn't improve and, in my opinion, it doesn't even end, it just stops.

I'm not recommending this movie to anyone. I enjoyed the film. Most people won't. It was a very ambitious amateur film that made sense in a weird kind of way. It was artistic and the photography skills used were pretty good and made for some good imagery.I hate to give up the plot, but I think the kids were all suffering from a drug induced psychosis. The violence was an outcome of their hideous hallucinations. That's my opinion anyway.Lesson to be learned by this movie. For every action there is a reaction, and don't take drugs blindly; especially when you don't know what's in it.

found footage film at its worst also confusing

i thought the issue was false!!Bill harrison

very pleased with this item