SPOILER WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS
Similar to
Devil's Pass a short while ago, this is the found-footage story of a documentary team heading into Russia to find out what happened to a bunch of people who died years ago. Then come the differences: these guys are heading into the woods (and end up in an abandoned government facility for most of the movie) instead of the mountains, and they're bringing along a psychic so it's one of those ghost hunter type movies that are pretty common. Backwards N's ensue (that's how they make it Russian!).
Actually, this movie mixes found footage and regular filming. It should be a lesson to the typical found footage makers – rather than contriving absurd reasons for people to keep holding cameras or pointing them at the right thing, it's actually
less disruptive to the viewer to just drop the pretense and shoot things like a real movie. We all know it's fake, you don't have to bend over backwards to try to trick us.
Also, this movie takes place in Sadovich, which sounds like a very sad place.
There are some really creepy scenes of the sort found footage can do well – you can't see things clearly, but you know something is there. When you get a good clear view, it ruins the fear factor. But I felt like things didn't really make that much sense here, it was kind of just "ooh, scary ghosts!". And the ending was pretty inexplicable. I liked the idea of it, but there is never any explanation as to what the ghosts are all about or why they can cause that ending. I don't know, I guess movies can't win with me – either they overexplain it, or they don't explain enough.
Well, in the end, there are 34 bodies before the movie starts (that's what they're there to learn about!) and then 4 or so during the movie. I award this film a middling
3 out of 5 Sadoviches.
I was not particularly inspired by this movie into any feats of artwork, so here's a pirate puppy.
