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Wait A Minute... Someone At BNAT Liked THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES?!
Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here.
This guy contacted me in AICN chat tonight and started talking to me about his reaction to THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES at Butt-Numb-A-Thon. At first, I didn’t want to have the conversation. Too many people I like have yelled at me too much about that film already, and until I write my BNAT piece, I don’t want to say anything else about the screening.
But this guy’s been thinking about it since it happened, and he felt like he wanted to share his radically different reaction. I think there’s some stuff he says in here that MGM’s marketing department might do well to pay attention to... I think you can really hurt yourself with the audience if you play the “it’s all real” game too seriously.
But I’ll have more to say this weekend. For now, here’s TheNorthlander, who also just sent us a review of FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL the other day.
Hey guys, TheNorthlander here.
You put 200 film lovers in a room, show them a movie, and me and 4 more people absolutely love it. The rest hate the thing.
This is something I've been thinking about ever since BNAT, but travel and a few days of illness kept me from writing about it.
How does that work?
Well, before I get into detail about the film and my opinions of it; I want to address the things other people have said about it first.
So, in the words of Brian Glover in Alien 3, This is Rumor Control. Here are the facts!
"THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES is a comedy, or a parody of horror documentary movies."
- No it isn't. Nor did the film makers intend it to be one. They set out to make a serious horror film, and that's what this is. It's not funny, or intended to be.
"The filmmakers snuck out the back without doing a Q & A because they didn't get the "right" reactions from the audience, or because the audience didn't think it was funny or laughed in the wrong places or just didn't like the thing."
- No they didn't. They skipped the Q & A on orders from MGM. MGM wants to keep a lid on this being fake for some reason. Hence also the introduction of it as a "real documentary". If you ask me, that's a big mistake because people want the illusion of reality, and not reality itself, presented to them as they watch a movie. There is a difference here, and a vital one.
The reason I say this is because these are the two main complaints I hear about this film.
I don't mind anyone hating THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES at all, really. I just think if you're gonna hate a movie at least do it for the right reason and not because of a misunderstanding, that's all.
Anyway, on to my review.
By this time, most of you probably know what THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES is all about, but I'll present the story to you anyway, in spoilervision:
***SPOILERS***
This is a mockumentary (meaning fake documentary) about a serial killer on the loose, whose den of home video tapes have been found together with a bunch of bodies buried in the back yard.
We follow this as a documentary, we don't know who makes the documentary, we just watch the interviews of the people in charge of tracking the killer and family members of the victims etc.
We especially follow one of the victims, young Cheryl Dempsey, as she is stalked for a few days or weeks, to when she's kidnapped, tortured into slave submission in a basement dungeon somewhere, and held over the course of several years as the killer's "helper".
She's also the only one of his victims to have survived, but by then she's too brainwashed to be of use in hunting him down.
***END SPOILERS***
This is a movie I've been talking with a friend of mine about since Moriarty's review of it in back in May.
I had also seen clips from it on YouTube, clips like this one.
Which is, if seen as a single clip, genuinly creepy stuff. This is the image I had of this film, together with the knowledge that it was a fake horrordocumentary, and that was all. And it was a movie I've been looking forward to a lot.
Which by itself might explain the reason I didn't hate it like so many others did. I happened to know what it was going in, which meant less bagage for me - I didn't have to decide if it was real or not or what they were trying to say with it or anything, I could just sit back and enjoy the thing, as the horror movie that it was.
I think this is an important point for MGM to think of when they market a movie like this. I think during the early stages of tease-marketing, actually letting people think this is something real might be a way to keep people's attention. But at some point before you let them into the movie theater you have to tell them they're watching a fictional film, because people are not stupid. And they don't like being lied to.
Besides, nobody has anything to gain by walking out of a theater thinking a movie was real when it wasn't.
From a ticket buyer's point of view, this doesn't really make sense.
If someone told you THIS IS SPINAL TAP was a real documentary, would you like it as much? Would you appreciate it more, because you didn't take it as the comedy it is?
In the same way, if people are gonna appreciate this as a horror film, it doesn't help to tell them it isn't one.
But apart from that, strictly as a horror movie then, how was it?
Well, it's definetly something I will see enough times to warrant a DVD purchase, and I'm the kind of DVD collector that only buys stuff he intends to see several times over. It's not as good as Blair Witch, but it's still really good and creepy.
And if you didn't like Blair Witch, you might still like this one.
It did have flaws, naturally. Like some have pointed out, if you're a lot into forensics, murder investigations and stuff like that, you're most likely gonna find a bunch of inaccuracies ("Dismemberment expert"?).
Sometimes, it takes itself a bit too seriously. The guy is showing all the tapes lined up on a table, and it has sort of the Spaceballs ship flyover feel to it, you know the one that never ends. They could have cut that table in half.
The balloon girl - I though she was a setup for something that was meant to be payed off later on. It felt like it, to me. Like that balloon girl was someone we were meant to meet and found out how she ended up there. Instead she just vanished from the story.
But other than that, I absolutely found the thing to be a compelling horror movie, effectively told, with creepy images and without the fourth wall. Which is the best thing about mockumentaries, the lack of that protecting fourth wall.
And also, like someone pointed out to me, we don't really know who it is that makes the documentary. It could potentially be the actual killer. Not saying it is, but it's something to guess at.
If you like creepy horror stuff, give this one a go. But see it as a creepy horror movie. If people tell you it's a comedy or a real documentary or whatever, don't listen.
In fact, if anyone ever say a horror documentary featuring the victims like in THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT or THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES is real and it's showing theatrically, don't believe it.
Just go and watch it as the horror movie it is.
/TheNorthlander
You put 200 film lovers in a room, show them a movie, and me and 4 more people absolutely love it. The rest hate the thing.
This is something I've been thinking about ever since BNAT, but travel and a few days of illness kept me from writing about it.
How does that work?
Well, before I get into detail about the film and my opinions of it; I want to address the things other people have said about it first.
So, in the words of Brian Glover in Alien 3, This is Rumor Control. Here are the facts!
"THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES is a comedy, or a parody of horror documentary movies."
- No it isn't. Nor did the film makers intend it to be one. They set out to make a serious horror film, and that's what this is. It's not funny, or intended to be.
"The filmmakers snuck out the back without doing a Q & A because they didn't get the "right" reactions from the audience, or because the audience didn't think it was funny or laughed in the wrong places or just didn't like the thing."
- No they didn't. They skipped the Q & A on orders from MGM. MGM wants to keep a lid on this being fake for some reason. Hence also the introduction of it as a "real documentary". If you ask me, that's a big mistake because people want the illusion of reality, and not reality itself, presented to them as they watch a movie. There is a difference here, and a vital one.
The reason I say this is because these are the two main complaints I hear about this film.
I don't mind anyone hating THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES at all, really. I just think if you're gonna hate a movie at least do it for the right reason and not because of a misunderstanding, that's all.
Anyway, on to my review.
By this time, most of you probably know what THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES is all about, but I'll present the story to you anyway, in spoilervision:
***SPOILERS***
This is a mockumentary (meaning fake documentary) about a serial killer on the loose, whose den of home video tapes have been found together with a bunch of bodies buried in the back yard.
We follow this as a documentary, we don't know who makes the documentary, we just watch the interviews of the people in charge of tracking the killer and family members of the victims etc.
We especially follow one of the victims, young Cheryl Dempsey, as she is stalked for a few days or weeks, to when she's kidnapped, tortured into slave submission in a basement dungeon somewhere, and held over the course of several years as the killer's "helper".
She's also the only one of his victims to have survived, but by then she's too brainwashed to be of use in hunting him down.
***END SPOILERS***
This is a movie I've been talking with a friend of mine about since Moriarty's review of it in back in May.
I had also seen clips from it on YouTube, clips like this one.
Which is, if seen as a single clip, genuinly creepy stuff. This is the image I had of this film, together with the knowledge that it was a fake horrordocumentary, and that was all. And it was a movie I've been looking forward to a lot.
Which by itself might explain the reason I didn't hate it like so many others did. I happened to know what it was going in, which meant less bagage for me - I didn't have to decide if it was real or not or what they were trying to say with it or anything, I could just sit back and enjoy the thing, as the horror movie that it was.
I think this is an important point for MGM to think of when they market a movie like this. I think during the early stages of tease-marketing, actually letting people think this is something real might be a way to keep people's attention. But at some point before you let them into the movie theater you have to tell them they're watching a fictional film, because people are not stupid. And they don't like being lied to.
Besides, nobody has anything to gain by walking out of a theater thinking a movie was real when it wasn't.
From a ticket buyer's point of view, this doesn't really make sense.
If someone told you THIS IS SPINAL TAP was a real documentary, would you like it as much? Would you appreciate it more, because you didn't take it as the comedy it is?
In the same way, if people are gonna appreciate this as a horror film, it doesn't help to tell them it isn't one.
But apart from that, strictly as a horror movie then, how was it?
Well, it's definetly something I will see enough times to warrant a DVD purchase, and I'm the kind of DVD collector that only buys stuff he intends to see several times over. It's not as good as Blair Witch, but it's still really good and creepy.
And if you didn't like Blair Witch, you might still like this one.
It did have flaws, naturally. Like some have pointed out, if you're a lot into forensics, murder investigations and stuff like that, you're most likely gonna find a bunch of inaccuracies ("Dismemberment expert"?).
Sometimes, it takes itself a bit too seriously. The guy is showing all the tapes lined up on a table, and it has sort of the Spaceballs ship flyover feel to it, you know the one that never ends. They could have cut that table in half.
The balloon girl - I though she was a setup for something that was meant to be payed off later on. It felt like it, to me. Like that balloon girl was someone we were meant to meet and found out how she ended up there. Instead she just vanished from the story.
But other than that, I absolutely found the thing to be a compelling horror movie, effectively told, with creepy images and without the fourth wall. Which is the best thing about mockumentaries, the lack of that protecting fourth wall.
And also, like someone pointed out to me, we don't really know who it is that makes the documentary. It could potentially be the actual killer. Not saying it is, but it's something to guess at.
If you like creepy horror stuff, give this one a go. But see it as a creepy horror movie. If people tell you it's a comedy or a real documentary or whatever, don't listen.
In fact, if anyone ever say a horror documentary featuring the victims like in THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT or THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES is real and it's showing theatrically, don't believe it.
Just go and watch it as the horror movie it is.
/TheNorthlander
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Dec 21, 2007 7:15:54 AM CST
Hey, "The Northlander", have you posted this objective view on I
by jackpumpkinhead
I had a look at the movie's page there and it was amusing to see MGM and the Dowdies... errr, I mean, of course, "fully objective and impartial viewers like The Northlander" (usually registered within the same week) post "this is real" reviews links to the movie's fake sites about nonexistent serial killers.
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...that the conceit in this movie is not that they're playing it as "real" - which they absolutely shouldn't, because no one could really mistake this for real - but because they failed so miserably in the execution of the mockumentary and that they apparently THINK that this works. And Christ, it couldn't work any less. But someone thinks it does, and that's just appalling.
Obviously no one's going to post my review, and that's OK, but there's something you need to know if you're going to go see this movie. There's never a question as to whether it's real or not; if you can't figure out that it's fake from the first time the first character speaks, you shouldn't be allowed out of your bedroom. It's PAINFULLY obvious. However, that in and of itself shouldn't immediately disqualify this film as something you'd take a chance on.
What you need to know is that there are flashes of real horror, real brilliance in this film, but they're so few and far between that ultimately they amount to very little.
The opening sequence literally made me sick to my stomach. It's not gruesome and it's not graphic, but it hits a chord of depravity that, whether you think it's real or not, is revolting. There's a death sequence that, while again not graphic, is extremely troubling to watch. There are even really creepy, effective artistic moments, like when they make mention of how many serial killers are currently operating in the country. You see a cloth representation of the USA...and then about 50 spots just begin to bleed, soaking through. There's a sad, painful moment towards the end that then pays off the first scene. I saw it coming, kinda, but...I didn't see it coming the way it came. And even though there were parts of the movie I HATED by that moment, that gave me legitimate shivers.
If you had to compare this to another movie you'd compare it to LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, a film that more or less sucked as a piece of cinema but that succeeded in chilling you with an idea even so. There are some awful, horribly executed facets to this film. Some of the sequences are just laughable, and the aforementioned cutaway to the "Dismemberment Expert" is so bad that it's shameful; it's inexplicable that anyone would think it a good idea to keep in the theatrical release. But the real problems come from the directors - they had no idea how to get naturalistic, unrehearsed-seeming performances out of their actors. Some of them are just bad actors (if you see anyone from any of the victim's families onscreen, just prepare to feel awkward at how bad they are). Otherwise I think there are a lot of GOOD actors in here who were failed by the writers/directors. If you're going to simulate a documentary - whether you're letting your audience in on the fiction or not - you had better get your actors to perform as though everything that's happening is unscripted. That's law, and see any GOOD mockumentary to know exactly how that's done. And yet every actor here, save for one or maybe two, feels painfully rehearsed, overly-nuanced, like they're playing stage-play roles in an adaptation of an actual documentary. It. Never. Works.
I wasn't at BNAT, but I can imagine the rejection that must be innate after being told that this was real. It's the wrong way to market the film, plain and simple, in the same way that these filmmakers were the wrong ones to shoot it (I can only imagine what this might have been in a capable director's hands). That's not to say they're talentless, but they're clearly not "There" yet. It's a great effort, but such a heavily flawed one that I think most audiences are going to scoff at it.
I am beating the corpse of a dead horse so badly here that I should be jailed for it, but I think an honest, non-BNAT opinion of the movie needs to come out. Don't reject it out of hand for the way it's being handled by the studio - check it out for the two or three scenes that really, really hit hard, and then hope that the next time someone gives this a shot it lives up to that level of promise. -
I've expressed some of my views on this film on the BNAT MySpace group, but that's it.
Do you have a link to what you're talking about? -
This bothered me maybe more than anything else. OK, so we're supposed to believe that the footage shot was done on crappy-quality VHS tape in the early 90s. Fine, I can buy that. A lot of things were taped on crappy-quality VHS tapes in the early 90s. However, in this film, that's not what we see. What we see, in sorrowfully obvious obviousness, is that they've gone to painstaking lengths to make HD footage look like distorted, crappy VHS footage. It warbles and flickers in and out at a rate that's so prevalent that it goes far beyond early bad video quality. You can TELL they're trying too hard. Worse than that, it's all formatted in widescreen. How many of you ever saw a VHS camera in the early 90s that shot in widescreen, seriously?
It begs an obvious question: why the HELL didn't they just shoot the killer's tape sequences with an old VHS camcorder? I'm sorry if that makes too much sense and would have saved too much money, but c'mon, seriously now.
Gack, sorry, I'm just venting. I hate seeing wasted promise and I hate that the promise in this film was wasted just because these guys made such elementary and unnecessary mistakes. I'll stop now. -
You make some points, but about your comparison to Last House on the Left, I think a more fair one would be to a movie called The Last Broadcast.
That one was made shortly before The Blair Witch Project, and is a horror mockumentary set up with a presenter who is also the maker of the documentary. He tells the story of a couple of young filmmakers that go into the woods searching for the Jersey Devil and end up dead. Then, through interviews with people surrounding the case we found out what happened.
It's a very similar idea to both Blair Witch and Poughkeepsie, only it came before both. And was better than neither. -
I saw the trailer for this film before The Mist, and it was pretty obvious to me that it was fictional. Those sitting around me for the most part seemed to realize it too very early on in the film. This film does a poor job of convincing people otherwise. Maybe I'm wrong and have too much faith in people's intelligence, but I don't feel like many people are going to have this problem.
There were two points early on that msde me suspect it was a spoof. One was the flyover scene you mentioned, the other was the balloon scene. It became pretty clear before long that there was no more funny coming. This wasn't an expectation of mine going in, and didn't stay an expectation for long once the idea had occured to me. I could not enjoy this film. It's a shame because I think the idea is a good one, but the filmmaker's just failed in their execution. I'm normally a lot more forgiving of horror films than other genres, but I just couldn't get into this film. -
I think you mostly got my point but missed the basis of my comparison. I'll blame that on the fact that I didn't explain it well enough.
You're right, LAST HOUSE and TPT are totally different movies - different styles, different subject matter, different scope. What I was trying to say was that they are both, for the most part, efforts that had some brilliant moments but overall are pathetic films. That's to compare nothing about their story and genre, just a more philosophical idea that they missed the mark as per execution but succeed in being ethereally creepy in concept.
You'll never find anyone who will call LAST HOUSE a good movie. It's poorly shot, poorly written, mostly poorly acted, and just altogether rough. But Craven was trying out some wholly original ideas, and even though it was bad it STILL horrified people and people still love it even for (and I'm sure in large part because of, in many cases) its flaws. It had its moments, too - the metallic sound effect that accompanies the machete coming out, the villains pulling the girl's guts out. I'd have to look at TPT as a similar kind of failure - the kind that flashes some genius but collapses under its own crappiness. I think that there are ideas in TPT that really could set the bar for future horror mockumentary, but all the same the film itself will be regarded as something of a joke. -
Waaaaaaay back at BNAT 2, the first film screened was DESTINATION MARS. It was billed as a real "found" film, with a documentary running beforehand. It was a fake, which people figured out at various times throughout the first 20 minutes. It was fun.
As far as TPT, we weren't "offended" at being joked with. It's not that we "didn't get it". The movie was just bad, from both the creative and technical aspects. -
Jesus, the guy's just trying to offer a different perspective. Where does he talk about how dumb we are for not liking it? God I hate Internet Attack Culture.
On another note - even though I don't think the comment was directed at me - I didn't want anyone to think I insinuated that BNATers were cheated or offended by the way the film was presented. In fact, the way it happened, it sounds like Mori is suffering the ultimate case of Don't Shoot the Messenger. That said, I still think it's shitty that the studio ever tried to pull off that kind of campaign. It's not just kind of stale, but more than that it's so misguided and inept that it's actually almost funny. -
No gives a shit about this. Just drop it.
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AICN was obviously well-paid to pimp this horrible looking flick. They've tried repeatedly to prop it up after it nearly single-handedly sunk BNAT 9. Here they are one last time going to the well. Let this one die already guys. You blew the marketing, but you'll get paid anyway so stop ramming this turkey down our throats.
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OHMIGAWSSHHHH, you're all so clever for working it out. For working out that a fucking studio would EVER put out a fucking snuff movie as a theatrical release. You sit there basking in the glow of your geek power you deluded wankers.
Judging by the almost rabid ferocity that so many of the BNATers greeted this film with I have no interest whatsoever in attending a future event. You all sound like obnoxious, sanctimonious assholes....especially that Nordling. -
Maybe we'll have to agree to disagree about Last House on the Left.
I think it's a good film, and like you say the fact that it's horrifying despite its technical flaws is what makes it as good as it is, in my opinion.
But that's me. -
Stay current! We already know what happened at BNAT.
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We live in the 21st century where babies can surf the web. If there are people that think TPT is real, it just proves that teh internets are making people even stupider.
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Is that there are people that actually enjoyed it. I'm not one to knock others taste in films but this whole torture porn genre is waaaaay past it's expiration date. I'm looking forward to Cloverfield, the idea of a monster movie shot through a handheld camera is a good idea, same as the new Romero film with a similar direction,but to put that together with a genre that does nothing to entertain is just crap. I don't think the bnat crowd were mad that they were told it was "real" ,I think they were mad because they are tired of seeing the same old shit, how many times can you see... " as she is stalked for a few days or weeks, to when she's kidnapped, tortured into slave submission in a basement dungeon somewhere, and held over the course of several years."? That shits old ,played out and kind of creepy after a while. Gotta start worrying about the writters of this shit.
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The trailer hints that it isn't fake, but it obviously is. Blair Witch had more going for it with the Sci-Fi network special and the internet marketing, but that was almost ten years ago.Does the film even mention why this "real" news story never got national coverage, which in real life it would?
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Its a dreadful film, almost retarded in its poor craftsmanship. However, I did leave the room in disgust, which is pretty rare for me, considering I tend to enjoy rather depraved media. I think, like perhaps this Poughkeepsie Tapes, or other recent efforts like Broken or August Underground, its a combination of someone who sets out to entertain by degrading and abusing someone, but lacking any abillity as a film maker, and not having the honesty to just make porn that pisses me off, or offends me about some of these flicks. Damn, I feel like Roger Ebert.
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Those "experts" that they have during the interviews, though, a lot of that is acted or played directly for laughs. I'm not sure what, exactly, that's supposed to represent from the POV of the filmmakers. Either they intended that or it is a hugely unfortunate consequence of them not getting the right performances from their actors OR them not communicating what they wanted from the performances. I was in and out of TPKs, and every time I did walk in and catch part of the experts interviews, every one of them was inappropriate in tone for it to be a genuine horror movie, which just killed it in its tracks. Those folks really needed a grim tone, but what they portrayed was befuddled astonishment with zero feeling that what they witnessed in the tapes and the crime scenes had any impact on them whatsoever aside from "Well lookee here! He's done gone and put this feller's head inside this gal's torso! Hunh! Now THAT my friend... is weird. Oh, hey, coffee break!"
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Dec 22, 2007 2:35:26 AM CST
Last universally despised BNAT horror sneak was House of 1K Corp
by unchienandalou
...and it actually turned out to be somewhat okay so I'm not going to let the overwhelmingly negative reaction to Poughkeepsie sap the openness of my mind towards it. Everything else Zombie has made since Corpses has been grade A shit but his debut feature had lots of good ideas that were just executed shoddily which is not unexpected since he's a cinematic dilettante.
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A friend showed this little trilogy at Splatterhouse. People actually went outside and waited for the next feature because they (and I) thought we were watching a snuff film. He had to show the interviews on the special features with the "victims" to prove otherwise. Every scene is one long shot with the torture happening in camera. The victums screaming to the point of exhaustion and you can see in their body language that they have just finally given up. Really brilliant film-making from a logistical standpoint and the gore effects were OUTSTANDING!Does this compare with that or is it just Saw with bad cinematography? I'll actually be happy with either one.
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I wasn't making some ironic statement with different spellings of VICTIMS, I'm just a jack-ass who didn't proof-read.
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Having spoken to TheNorthlander several times at and after BNAT, I can understand why he enjoyed this film. And, he seems to make some decent arguments about why so many of us (including me!) hated it.
Mori should never have told us this was a documentary. It made the viewing awkward and uncomfortable... not exciting, thrilling or even interesting. In fact, this film made me realize **why** some documentaries are so good in the first place: they present testimonies, evidence and people in a compelling manner that invite you to follow the narrative.
My problem with TPT is it wasn't compelling at all... it was like watching a film by a couple of douchebag frat guys wanting to gross out their friends and include ridiculous scenes like a woman "consenting" to be raped.
So, yeah... I may have liked this film a bit had it just been shown. But, once I realized that this was nothing more than another lame attempt to "fool" the audience, I was done. I watched the whole thing, sure... and I'll never do it again. -
You know it to be true!
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i was wondering when/if someone would mention these
i too have chased people out of the room viewing these films because they believed it to be actual snuff
when i saw the trailer for TPT at The Mist i was surprised they were releasing something like this theatrically
while i may personally enjoy these films i still find it unsettling that society as a whole accepts them enough to warrent a full-on major film release -
Do you want us to be burned alive because you don't like the movie itself? If that's the case you're morally wrong, but I understand (see Fall Out Boy fans). Or do you feel that way because it is "torture porn" and anything that falls under that blanket is a disgusting display of human cuelty? If that is the case... well, birdie, you sir are a hypocrite, and your god will see to it that you will burn in hell. Now the only question I have left is: When a god watches people burning in hell, is that then considered "torture porn"?
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Because torture porn is shit. Next?
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It is simply meant to debase any credibility to the term "tortue porn". If you don't like the story in the August Underground movies that"'s fair enough as there isn't one. To dismiss the acting, setup, and most importantly the make-up and special effects (sans CGI no less!)because of the subject matter is what's retarded. AND TO WANT ME AND OTHERS BURNED ALIVE IN A THEATRE! Well, as I said, I get the sentiment but it's counter-productive to ones plight for morality. I think I've explained myself and if you disagree then I suppose you can go back to church and plan more terroristic attacks on infidel movie enthusiasts. Just like Jesus would do.
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Dec 23, 2007 1:38:16 PM CST
After being SCAMMED into viewing, you can't get your money back
by mooyork
So if you are tricked into going to a film, thinking it is going to be a documentary about Kendall Francois (a real poughkeepsie murderer), you can't get your 10 bucks back when tricked into seeing a fake mockumentary. Even if it's 30 seconds in and you realize you were scammed into seeing a fetish movie and not a documentary. That was my point before, not that you thought what you were seeing was real (since the acting and use of music/heart beats is horrible), it's that you you want your money back, because it's not about what you thought it was about. Hopefully word will get out through reviews and talkbacks so people won't be tricked and only people who want to see a fetish mockumentary will pay for and be happy.
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this so-called "torture" "porn," or "torpor." What's the point? Anyone can torture porn. No, seriously, I'm glad this genre is crawling back to its cave. No offence to anyone who likes it, but I think it's kind of sick and creepy, kind of like Wild Hogs.
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Movies like Saw and Hostile don't glorify torturers any more than American History X glorifies nazi skinheads, or Goodfellas glorifies gangsters. The movies take flawed characters in extreme circumstances and anylize how they come to be. If you want to talk about glorifying murderers check out the news. Here in Omaha we had some jack-ass shoot up the mall because he wanted to be famous, and on cue the news stations plastered his name, face, family, life story, GPA, and underwear size on the television. What's scary is that some other jack-ass is going to see the "noteriety" he got and follow suit. You could argue that movies inspire murder and in some cases you may be right, but movies don't create "stars" the way that news media does.
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guys, if a movie is bad, its bad. Telling people, "its only bad because you think its in a different category of film" is about the worst damage-control I have ever seen.
Remember when BNAT was about geeks watching geek-tastic movies? Its all gone commercial now, and is just another avenue of marketing for studios with really bad movies tied around their necks like millstones. Reminds me of those so-called 'new woodstock' concerts that were going on in the mid 90s - trying so hard to set up facades of 'home-grown geek festival of fun' when really its just paid marketing for crap features.
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