****REPOSTED FROM THE LATE LATE SHOW WITH ADDITIONAL EDITS AND COMMENTS.****
For the duration of the movie, and for about ten minutes afterwards, I thought this was totally chilling. It had been a long time since a movie had unnerved me that badly. I had hated the found footage, but since it led credibility to some of the claims I'd heard about the movie at the time
There's been a lot of hype about this. I've heard that this is a true story. I was terrified even if it wasn't, but if it's true, I'm investing in crucifixes, sage wands, and salt in copious quantities just in case. Since there are no ending or beginning credits, it lends some credence to the story that this is true, as does the complete lack of an entry on IMDB.com, which I use as a kind of movie Bible.
It's been a very, very long time since I was this scared in a movie. There's a fine line there for me. Good, fun scares, and "oh my god wtf are you watching?" scared, and this toed the line a lot. The common internet critique is that this isn't even a bit scary, and I think that happens because you need to be able to get involved in the rising action of the story AND have enough imagination to believe, even if for a short time, that these people were haunted by a demon. You also need to believe that this was real, and I was having a stupid moment and believed exactly that.
The intro portion of the film is overly long in my opinion. I looked at my watch a few times waiting for something scarier than a small town haunted corn field to happen. When it finally did happen, my heart was beating so fast if I'd farted I probably would have dopplered my way through the rest of the movie. A transition scene or two might have been helpful.
Watching the thing get flung from the darkened hallway into the camera. I won't tell you what it was, and it was bad when I didn't know what it was, but it was oh so much worse when I learned what that thing was.
Oh, and I guested on the LAMBcast again. This time we discussed Tom Cruise. For more info, you can go here, or check out the LAMB (Large Association of Movie Blogs) on Facebook.
