Apartment 143 (Emergo) (2011)

Technically a found footage horror, Apartment 143 is a supernatural procedural where where a team of paranormal investigators are invited to solve a pressing problem.

Ditching modern horror un-storytelling, we're presented with the old school notion of horror and hauntings as an externalisation of prepubescent sexual anxiety and the family psychodrama.

Watch for: horror with a good story; a found footage horror that doesn't suck.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 31 October 2012.

Paranormal Activity 4 (2012)

Spooky special effects continue in their search of a story in Paranormal Activity 4.

It's not scary, feels tedious, and has no sense of storytelling. Just like all of Oren Peli's 'horror' films, including Chernobyl Diaries.

Forget the stupid marketing and Skip This With Extreme Prejudice.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 31 October 2012.

The Dinosaur Project (2012)

Jurassic Park meets Blair Witch meets Paranormal Activity in The Dinosaur Project.

The resulting, incoherent mess could well be Survivor: Dinosaur Jungle.

The story is hackneyed, the characters are cardboard, but the film doesn't take itself seriously, and is so very silly and fun to watch.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 17 October 2012.

POV: A cursed film (POV: 呪われたフィルム) (2012)

Japan delivers a postmodern found footage horror where real-life idols (played by themselves) are harassed by ominous goings-on that Wes Craven might have devised.

What's off-putting: the low budget television film look, lack of real scares.

What's going for it: highly literate playfulness as the film deconstructs and reconstructs the horror genre.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 25 April 2012.

The Devil Inside (2012)

A psychologically disturbed young woman brings a camera crew to visit her mum, who has been locked up in a Vatican sanitarium since the Devil made her kill her cell group.

It's highly predictable, highly incompetently written that you can't take this seriously.

It's so highly incompetent and improbable that it might be the Spinal Tap of demonic possession horror films, though.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 7 March 2012.

Last exorcism, The

A priest conducts exorcisms knowing from experience that there's no such thing as demons or demonic possession, only confused children in need of counselling and stressed parents in need of some reassurance a spectacle and ritual can offer.

The last exorcism may be the only decent film in the found footage horror genre precisely because its plot isn't bounded by the genre's premises itself.


Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 27 October 2010.