I've watched this because I was bored and it ran on television, and I remembered that I've seen the trailer for the second movie and that was so bad (but had an interesting idea), that I thought: Why not watch this?
And to get this out the way upfront: I hate found footage movies and this is best categorized as found footage. Also it is a low budget movie, by an unknown georgian-russian director with hardly any experience. The idea is pretty simple: film just the screen of one of the participants of a group skype call:
A group of teenager meet for a group skype call, which accidentally takes place at the anniversary of a suicide of one of their friends. Now, during the group chat our main protagonist gets messages from that dead girl, while some unknown person always joins the skype sessions. What was first thought of as a harmless prank by a troll seems to be the work of a skilled hacker targeting the group...
Easy premises, easy story. Does it work? Well, partly. I think the acting was okay, though the dialogues where partly way too much and too unbelievable. There are two scenes, that in my opinion where too overdone, totally overreaction and overacting. Also, some scenes where really boring and too long (all the time she starts searching something) - especially interesting: If she starts searching things, the chat automagically is mute, i.e. they stop talking? Really strange.
Also there are a few plot holes, like: why do they not use the smartphone to call each other, or to call help? Chatroulette, really? Why don't they simply turn of their computers all together, to get away, if they so desperately want to get away (of course, it wouldn't help the story and it wouldn't work for the found footage aspect - but it really makes you wonder...).
On the other hand I like the premises - it's something different to the classic camcorder or handycam shaky videos that you associate with found footage movies, and so I am not even that annoyed (I hate the constant shaky cam, the "selfi" parts where the camera operator turns the camera around to talk into it, the pointing the camera on the feet to give the feel of some amateur filming, etc.). That's refreshing. Additionally - and this is really important to me, someone that works as a computer scientist - they did not do any absurd stuff with IT - everything that happens seems plausible, and I also liked that they did not invent apps and websites that resemble actual apps and sites, but used real sites and apps to do their movie. This goes as far as that videos they used in the movie are real videos they uploaded to YouTube - and they are still there: www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhdblEqwoRg
Getting to the horror aspect of this movie: Well, I wasn't scared. At all. I do appreciate what they tried to do, but this did not work at all for me. There was also no gore, I feel like this is an "FSK 12" rating.
In the end I was struggling with a rating of 2 or 3. I went with 3, because 1) the director is rather unexperienced and unknown, 2) it's a low budget production and 3) it is a fresh and new idea for found footage, and the first time I actually enjoyed found footage. Even though the movie has a lot of problems I enjoyed it, and therefore I grant it 6/10 stars.
Review by pygospaVIP 3BlockedParent2019-01-04T02:34:26Z
I've watched this because I was bored and it ran on television, and I remembered that I've seen the trailer for the second movie and that was so bad (but had an interesting idea), that I thought: Why not watch this?
And to get this out the way upfront: I hate found footage movies and this is best categorized as found footage. Also it is a low budget movie, by an unknown georgian-russian director with hardly any experience. The idea is pretty simple: film just the screen of one of the participants of a group skype call:
A group of teenager meet for a group skype call, which accidentally takes place at the anniversary of a suicide of one of their friends. Now, during the group chat our main protagonist gets messages from that dead girl, while some unknown person always joins the skype sessions. What was first thought of as a harmless prank by a troll seems to be the work of a skilled hacker targeting the group...
Easy premises, easy story. Does it work? Well, partly. I think the acting was okay, though the dialogues where partly way too much and too unbelievable. There are two scenes, that in my opinion where too overdone, totally overreaction and overacting. Also, some scenes where really boring and too long (all the time she starts searching something) - especially interesting: If she starts searching things, the chat automagically is mute, i.e. they stop talking? Really strange.
Also there are a few plot holes, like: why do they not use the smartphone to call each other, or to call help? Chatroulette, really? Why don't they simply turn of their computers all together, to get away, if they so desperately want to get away (of course, it wouldn't help the story and it wouldn't work for the found footage aspect - but it really makes you wonder...).
On the other hand I like the premises - it's something different to the classic camcorder or handycam shaky videos that you associate with found footage movies, and so I am not even that annoyed (I hate the constant shaky cam, the "selfi" parts where the camera operator turns the camera around to talk into it, the pointing the camera on the feet to give the feel of some amateur filming, etc.). That's refreshing. Additionally - and this is really important to me, someone that works as a computer scientist - they did not do any absurd stuff with IT - everything that happens seems plausible, and I also liked that they did not invent apps and websites that resemble actual apps and sites, but used real sites and apps to do their movie. This goes as far as that videos they used in the movie are real videos they uploaded to YouTube - and they are still there: www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhdblEqwoRg
Getting to the horror aspect of this movie: Well, I wasn't scared. At all. I do appreciate what they tried to do, but this did not work at all for me. There was also no gore, I feel like this is an "FSK 12" rating.
In the end I was struggling with a rating of 2 or 3. I went with 3, because 1) the director is rather unexperienced and unknown, 2) it's a low budget production and 3) it is a fresh and new idea for found footage, and the first time I actually enjoyed found footage. Even though the movie has a lot of problems I enjoyed it, and therefore I grant it 6/10 stars.