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Why this 'found footage' film failed [spoilers]

posted 12 years ago by scs0
7 replies | jump to latest

For me, "Found Footage" films are hit or miss. Either I enjoy them a great deal or it feels like a waste of time. This movie was a waste of time and here's why (warning there are lots of spoilers):

1. Unyielding repeated dialog: the characters have the same conversations over and over and over. Did I say over and over? Even the scene on the street where the kidnapper speaks to them is loaded with redundant redundancy.

2. The characters are dumb: they initially report the Amber Alert car to the police while on an interstate, but after the car pulls off and heads into a town making various turns the characters do not report this information to the police but repeatedly wonder why the police are not appearing.

3. The characters are dumb pt2: after speaking directly with the kidnapper they take it statements at face value instead of calling the police to confirm his claims.

4. The characters are dumb pt3: Through a creative plot device, the characters plant a bluetooth mic within the Amber Alert car and actually get some useful information like the kidnapper's phone number. Unfortunately no one thought this information would be useful for the police. Another dumb action: while they were eavesdropping no one thought to pull out a pen and paper to take down any information that might be useful. Only once he read out his phone number did Samantha scramble for a pen and paper.

5. You quickly come to loath Samantha. She is a bull-headed dimwit that you end up wanting to see dead at the hand of the kidnapper.

How could this movie have been improved?

1. Samantha wouldn't have come across as insufferably bull-headed if Nate had been on the same page as her. It would have also protected the audience for their obnoxious debates on the matter (I literally had to hit mute for extended periods of time and used the subtitles as a guide for knowing when it was safe to turn the audio back on)

2. Tone down the dumb: had the characters done the logical things by reporting critical information to the cops it would have stopped me from yelling at the screen. The plot could have remained otherwise untouched by having the cops be the dimwits by being completely out of the picture. Their unresponsiveness would have made the actions of Nate and Samantha to make more sense too. It would have caused us to have sympathy for them: "So the cops can't be bothered with following the Amber Alert car but those greedy bast*ards can pull them over for speeding?", "Of course they have to help the girl, where are the cops?", etc...

Civility is just a warm and fuzzy name for censorship.

[–] freakctc 11 years ago

I agree with your points. However, the idea of using the microphone as the only reason to keep the camera on was a bit of a stretch.
Plus, the officer pulling them over not knowing about the Amber Alert kind of had me puzzled. I could understand if he didn't believe them, and claimed they were saying that just to get out of the ticket, but to not know about it at all was just bad.
I think the writer's didn't want to have Samantha constantly calling the police for updates and such, cause frankly, that would get annoying too. "He made a left turn, he made a right turn. He's stopping for gas." I guess there is the point that, every time they'd call the police for the updates, the cops would probably keep telling her 'Don't follow him.' and her not listening would make viewers even more mad.
Now the fact that Samantha was upset and yelling didn't help anyone like her anymore. But at the same point, seeing her getting all weepy and crying over it wouldn't be much of a help, either. But maybe somewhere in the middle. Somber, thoughtful moments, followed by outrage at how someone could do something so heinous. Just not screaming and crying back and forth.
I would say this movie reached 65% of it's potential. It needed a little more 'refinement' before getting released. But still, over all, it was enjoyable and had me sucked in at a lot of points.

[–] tchand58 11 years ago

For the sake of argument, if you had no idea this was a professional film, REALISTIC? Absolutely! Samantha's screaming and unrelenting chatter is a female in ANXIETY mode. I rate the film excellent. Absolutely would have happened this way in real life. We all do 'stupid stuff' when on overdrive.

I watched this on Netflix, the whole time being told it was true. It was SO realistic, I bought it 100%.

[–] JimmyZappa 11 years ago

So if this happened to you, you'd comically overact?

Cause that's exactly what these people were doing.

Stuff like this reminds me of "Movie Poop Shoot.com" from Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

[–] Xkape 11 years ago

If one's conscience weighed more than another's fear regarding chasing a possible killer who abducts kids, then the two would be continually bickering. That's not overacting. It's life. If anything, I got pissed at the guy for being such a whiney little wuss but that doesn't make it any less realistic because there are lots of folks who just don't want to get involved.

[–] JimmyZappa 11 years ago

No, you don't get it. I'm not saying the ARGUMENTS themselves are unrealistic. I'm saying the way they DELIVERED the arguments is unrealistic.

All that shrieking nonsense is the reason why people hate this film. Not to mention the stupid decisions they make. But even then, I could tell they were acting. This is something I don't notice in movies like Paranormal Activity or even Blair Witch for that matter because they kept the bitching to a minimum where it's just tolerable and understandable. Here it was just "WHY WHY WHY ARE THEY FORCING THEMSELVES TO SCREAM THE SAME DIALOGUE OVER AND OVER AGAIN TO SELL IT TO US HARD THAT THEY'RE IN A STATE OF PANIC".

If you can't maintain the illusion, you failed. If you manage to piss off the audience by making us sit through shrieking banshees making stupid decision after stupid decision, you should just quit making films altogether.

Stuff like this reminds me of "Movie Poop Shoot.com" from Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

[–] UltimaGabe 9 years ago

The issue here is that moviemakers, particularly bad ones, refuse to ever use silence for dramatic effect, even when it would be otherwise realistic. It would have been so much more realistic if the protagonists spent even a few minutes of their argument in silence- as many people do when arguing- but because that doesn't make for good cinema, the actors feel like they have to keep talking, keep arguing, even when their improvisation skills have left them far behind and they're just repeating the same things over and over (as if this makes for better cinema).

The problem is the writers don't give the actors believable material, the directors don't know how to get a realistic performance from the actors, and the actors aren't good enough at improvising to give a believable performance. So you end up with whining, screaming, and constantly repeated dialogue for an hour and a half.

[–] natalie_princess_of_OLTL 11 years ago

While yes, you do make good points I actually enjoyed this film. The dialogue was repetitive at times and yes, Samantha would probably be asked to stay on the phone with the police in real-life but the writers probably didn't want to do that.

Samantha didn't take the abductor's statements at face value--she did something probably stupider than that and repeatedly asked why she should believe him. She kept telling him she was going to call the police, she wanted to speak to the child, yes they'd follow him to his "ex-wife's house"... but she was thwarted by Nate each time, who showed his limited knowledge of child abductions by constantly insisting that custodial kidnappings are better and less harmful than stranger abductions. Nate was the stupid character here. (And also, the movie would have almost certainly ended here if Nate hadn't have been stupid. Do you really think the abductor would have allowed them to call the police or really brought the most likely drugged child over to the car? No. He probably would have returned to the car and gotten his gun.)

As for point 4--I think they were in shock at what was happening and people in stressful situations don't always have the quickest thinking. I'm actually pretty bad about making decisions at any time, but when it's important it takes me forever to react. So I can understand this.

Point 5--Go ahead and hate on Samantha, but I really identified with her if not all of her decisions. If she and Nate had been on the same page for the entire movie, there would have been no conflict and the film would have been pretty boring until the end.

I do agree with you that they should have reported things to the cops to gain a little more sympathy, and one thing that bugged me was them telling Nate they'd canceled the Amber Alert. I'm still scratching my head over that one...