Having bought this movie on a whim a few weeks ago, I must say that I am pleasantly surprised. I was not expecting to see what I saw, and that is a wonderfully made, low budget Canadian horror with plenty of genuinely eerie moments. In fact, it may be one of my favorite movies that I have watched in the past few months. Don't be fooled by the first half of the film which appears to be full of awful cliches and dumb characters. If you're like me and have been kinda bummed by the lack of creative and creepy films out there, you are certain to be happy by the time the film is done.
The film follows a young journalist named Carmen who is desperate to write the story of her career. Her boss seems to be holding her back from writing what she wants to, and when she discovers that several people have gone missing from the same hotel in Poland over the years, she takes the opportunity to take her boyfriend Marcus and a young intern named Sara over to the village to do some journalistic digging. They are greeted by some strange foreigners who chase them out of town when they start getting curious about the local church and the strange mist in the forest that never seems to move. Of course, now we get some typical cliches, but what would horror be without em? Our trio decide to sneak back into the forest against all better judgment and venture into the abnormal mist one by one. There is a fantastic scene with a statue in the mist that was extremely effective and well done. This is where the film starts getting crazy.
Without giving away too many details, I will say that the twist at the end of the movie really had me surprised. I was thrilled that the filmmakers chose to do something a little different rather than follow a typical story arc for a film like this. This movie really reminded me a lot of The Exorcist at some points. The shots with the creepy faces were done tastefully, without being shown so much that their effectiveness at creeping us out was lost. While there were definitely some parts where the characters acted dumb like in every movie, I think you really have to disengage yourself from that aspect to enjoy the vast majority of horror films. Take The Blair Witch Project. That was such a love it or hate it kind of film. The people who hated it were those who nitpicked, the ones who loved it were the ones who could separate the believability factor and really immersed themselves in the story. It really depends on how you look at things. I personally would rather sit back from reality for an hour and a half and get lost in the world of a movie in order to maximize my enjoyment. If I sat there shaking my head at every dumb or unbelievable thing that happens in a movie and use that as a sole reason to not like a film, I probably wouldn't be sitting here writing a blog like this. The fact that the filmmakers chose not to use subtitles for the plentiful parts of the film where the characters were speaking Polish was an interesting idea. I think it added to the scare factor because it puts us in the eyes of the main characters who really wouldn't know a word of what these guys are saying. You don't really need to understand them to get the gist of what was going on anyway.
Overall, this one is definitely one I would recommend, especially if you get freaked out by all those demon movies. This film was refreshing in a world full of blah movies, and definitely should be appreciated by horror fans.
4 OUT OF 5 STARS
**** out of *****
The film follows a young journalist named Carmen who is desperate to write the story of her career. Her boss seems to be holding her back from writing what she wants to, and when she discovers that several people have gone missing from the same hotel in Poland over the years, she takes the opportunity to take her boyfriend Marcus and a young intern named Sara over to the village to do some journalistic digging. They are greeted by some strange foreigners who chase them out of town when they start getting curious about the local church and the strange mist in the forest that never seems to move. Of course, now we get some typical cliches, but what would horror be without em? Our trio decide to sneak back into the forest against all better judgment and venture into the abnormal mist one by one. There is a fantastic scene with a statue in the mist that was extremely effective and well done. This is where the film starts getting crazy.
Without giving away too many details, I will say that the twist at the end of the movie really had me surprised. I was thrilled that the filmmakers chose to do something a little different rather than follow a typical story arc for a film like this. This movie really reminded me a lot of The Exorcist at some points. The shots with the creepy faces were done tastefully, without being shown so much that their effectiveness at creeping us out was lost. While there were definitely some parts where the characters acted dumb like in every movie, I think you really have to disengage yourself from that aspect to enjoy the vast majority of horror films. Take The Blair Witch Project. That was such a love it or hate it kind of film. The people who hated it were those who nitpicked, the ones who loved it were the ones who could separate the believability factor and really immersed themselves in the story. It really depends on how you look at things. I personally would rather sit back from reality for an hour and a half and get lost in the world of a movie in order to maximize my enjoyment. If I sat there shaking my head at every dumb or unbelievable thing that happens in a movie and use that as a sole reason to not like a film, I probably wouldn't be sitting here writing a blog like this. The fact that the filmmakers chose not to use subtitles for the plentiful parts of the film where the characters were speaking Polish was an interesting idea. I think it added to the scare factor because it puts us in the eyes of the main characters who really wouldn't know a word of what these guys are saying. You don't really need to understand them to get the gist of what was going on anyway.
Overall, this one is definitely one I would recommend, especially if you get freaked out by all those demon movies. This film was refreshing in a world full of blah movies, and definitely should be appreciated by horror fans.
4 OUT OF 5 STARS
**** out of *****