Protraph
Lack of good storyline.
Mathilde the Guild
Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.
Billy Ollie
Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable
kukua-73071
TLDR; If you watched Neo Genesis Evangelion series and liked the ending, you might like this movie.The movie starts off normal. A shiny, hopeful new start for couple, Scott and Penny. A bit of drama follows then the title character appears and things starts getting exciting.
Mystery and tension hooks the audience as they wonder who this Mr Jones is. What is he up to? Is he dangerous or a benevolent? What is in his basement? What are those creepy scarecrow thingies? We follow the couple as they explore Mr Jones' world and his creations.Then suddenly it falls into a trippy, epilepsy inducing mess of camera work, which for some people would be the best part of the show.
What follows it a bunch of black screens, bright screens, striped screens, camera swings and switch. rapid switches between "front" and "back" camera, disconnected scenes, cryptic/artsy scenes, flash backs, flash forwards, missing time, whatever.
For those who couldnt sit through the trippy part, this happened: (Major spoilers!)
Scott stole a voodoo baby doll.
This allowed something to escape the dream realm and into our world, maybe. It apparently killed off Mr Jones, "guardian of the dream border".
It then starts to psychologically terrorize our couple.
At this point, Penny could have already been held captive by the evil silent sisters or something. Her appearances may have been imaginary.Eventually the couple (or the Scott and his imagination) figures they(he) needs to return the doll. Scott fights off brain farts, hallucinations and mental warfare before he finally succeeds.
Scott then makes it his life goal to replace Mr Jones.
He is now the new Mr Jones. Penny could be dead or they kissed and said good bye. Who cares.
It felt like there should be a crowd standing around clapping for the main characters at the end.
Disclaimer, this is the 1st time I ever reviewed a movie or signed into IMDB. The movie broke me. The disappointment was real
begob
A dreaming couple downsize to the woods, where they enter a nightmare.Huge amount of skill in the storytelling. The opening sequence has lovely dialogue between a couple travelling in a car (the out-of-range phone conundrum is dealt with in seconds), then the editing flicks brilliantly through the exposition.But this doesn't hit the bass note needed for horror. Or, as an earlier reviewer said, it doesn't click and it's hard to tell why. It feels like an exercise in horror, rather than a horror, and I really didn't react to any of the scenes with fear, although there was tension throughout. The writer/director probably prefers original drama, rather than genre - if not he should stick with advertising.It gets back to the problem of treating horror as metaphor. Horror has nothing to do with reality - it is a dreamworld where the bizarre is made literal. So in this case the stolen package has to be the core, has to be explained consistent with the dreamworld. Instead, it's treated as a symbol and we never find out what's inside. This is genre - it's that simple. David Lynch is an exception.So much to admire about this: writing, directing, editing, sound. And the actors were good. But not a good horror.
TheRedDeath30
A young man convinces his wife to give up everything so that they can move to a shack in the middle of nowhere that will enable him to film the best nature documentary ever. They discover that their neighbor may be an enigmatic artist named Mr. Jones who creates creepy scarecrows. As they dive deeper into the mystery than they should, they discover that Mr. Jones may be creating totems to protect them from the dream world and they may have just ruined that protection and unleashed nightmare forces upon them.What a great concept, right? I was drawn into what could have been a great movie, but ultimately doesn't have the creative forces behind it to bring that idea to any sort of reasonable fruition. It does start off pretty good. The acting from the only two real characters in the movie is pretty good for a low budget horror film, though we are not really given any background or development that truly makes us learn anything about these people so that we'll care about them down the road. They are just an anonymous couple who seem to have given up life to be artists. They discover Mr. Jones cabin fairly early on in the film and there's some promise there as the scarecrows are pretty effectively made and lend some atmosphere to things, though let's not pretend these are original in any way. They're essentially more twisted versions of the policeman scarecrow in CHILDREN OF THE CORN.The first big problem in the movie is the found footage style. I'm not a hate of found footage, like so many others seem to be and I do not think it makes a movie garbage right off the bat, but you have to be using it for a reason, and you have to be consistent with it to give it the right feel. There's no reason for this to exist as found footage. Nothing is gained by the pretense of this being filmed by the characters, rather than just admitting it's a movie. Worse, it's really inconsistently shot. There are voice-overs, text overlays to introduce characters in interviews and shots that just plain could not have been created by the characters' filming at all. It breaks up the illusion of "found footage" even more and destroys it pretty much. They would have been much better off just telling this as a straightforward narrative.The biggest problems with the movie come once things start getting strange. Basically, things are just getting strange for the sake of being strange featuring a lot of random imagery and sounds, quick cuts from shot to shot and scene to scene and nonsense storytelling. It quickly becomes very hard to tell what's going on, or for that matter to even see what's going on in a lot of shots. It's all done under the pretense of being "dreamlike", but the reality is that it's a convenient excuse to not have to actually tell much of a story, to not have to create an actual narrative that makes sense, to not have to back up your plot with any events that would support what happens. You can just fill your fun time with anything you want to and say "it's a dream". A 4-year old's scribbling may be images in their mind, but few of us know what the picture is supposed to be and that's basically what this movie is.It all leads to a climax that I'm sure the director thinks is very clever and people who want to feel artsy will tell you has some grand meaning to be discussed in length. It means nothing because nothing that happened in the movie proceeding it has any real value. Random images leading to a random conclusion. That is all.
Helena Rix Warming
This movie is really thought through and the details are to perfection! - but you have to get it just right, and I think I did. Its all filmed by handhold camera and they did a great job! In the beginning we meet Scott and Penny, a happy young couple there just sold their apartment and moved away from family and friends, because Scott wanted to make a documentary about nature. They gambled it all and moved into a forest far away from civilization. Scotts interest is lost fast and this create troubles in their relationship.One day they run into Mr. Jones, a gateway keeper who keeps nightmares out of our world. He do this with these creepy "totems", he places around the woods, they make some sort of force. They will now make a movie about Mr. Jones and his art, because he is known as a mysterious artist and such a movie could bring in a load of money! .... Scott and Penny disturbs Mr. Jones force and now they will fight the consequences.You have to listen carefully when you see the interviews Scott do. This movie is a masterpiece and the "totems" are beautiful!
