What… in the hell…. was that? Who am I to crap on the 'found footage' genre? Nobody, that's who. I actually appreciate found footage movies. You don't have a lot of money, most found footage movies feature actors who will work for a decent meal, and you can be a little loosey-goosey with the way you shoot the damn thing. I mean it is found footage so just about anything goes. But director Matthew Bolton's found footage film 'Paranormal Incident'… I don't know what to say about it. Yes, it is kind of awful, but then it gets a little awfuler with an added awful twist that I totally didn't get. Went right over my head.
When we first meet John (Oliver Rayon) he is shackled to a hospital bed, beaten and bruised, being grilled by agent Rebecca (Amanda Barton) who appears to have a great rack. Just so you know, you weren't getting cast in this movie as a female character unless you had the appearance of a solid rack. Anyway, John is shackled to this bed because all of his friends have been brutally murdered while investigating some suspected paranormal activity at the closed Odenbrook House for the Loons. Agent Rebecca needs to know what happened, John doesn't really know what happened. I know… let's turn to the footage to see what we got.
John and his girl Tess (Sabrina Villalobos) are true believers in the supernatural, as they have all the EVP gear and cameras and junk that all paranormal geeks in movies have. They are also secretly in love with each other. John's buddy Daniel (Derrick Scott) and good friend Samantha (Chelsea Vincent) aren't believers, but apparently these four kids attend some class at Pepperdine that gives extra credit for mindless
ghost goose chases at closed insanitariums. Also along for the ride is Brennan the asshole jock (Brett Edwards) and his girlfriend Blake (Nadia Underwood). Thanks to Brennan using one of his old tapes to capture worthless footage, we were privileged to see one of his previous sexual outings which resulted in gratuitous nudity time. Outstanding.
So our kids get to the loony bin and prepare to setup shop. John however ducks out because he has something else to do. In fact John and his girl Tess thought it would be funny to chain the doors shut and lock the non-believers inside a notorious haunted nuthouse and then freak them all out by making weird sounds and stuff. HARHARHAR!!! Those crazy kids.
It's not long before the weird stuff starts happening. Or at least in theory the weird stuff is happening because as far as I could tell not a damn thing was happening except good looking people walking down badly lit hallways over-reacting to next to nothing. You want to see some young people go completely bonkers over seeing a spider-web, here you go.
Of course after it all goes to hell the plan is to get out but somebody thought it would be funny to chain the gates shut. HARHARHARHAR!!! Those crazy kids. Plus that somebody is nowhere to be found and since we keep cutting back to him in his hospital bed, even he doesn't know where he was while his buddies were getting slaughtered. Then it gets weird on us. Hell if I know what that was all about.
Let us focus on some of the positives that we observed with Matthew Bolton's movie, such as everybody in the cast being attractive. True enough almost all movies are filled with good looking people, I mean they are movies, but that's a positive. The acting might not have been all that good, but actor Derrick Scott did a fine job acting scared out of his mind, first when he saw the snake crawling around the ground outside the nuthouse, waving his arms around like six year old girl, and next when he ran into an invisible spider-web. That's was funny.
Now to the problems we experienced with 'Paranormal Incident' with the primary one being that it wasn't all that thrilling or scary or anything that I'm thinking a haunted house movie should probably be. Most of the time we were watching our kids walk around the crazy house waiting for something to happen, which never really does. There is the ghostly voice that shows up, but our poor kids can't hear it as only the EVP can. Me and the EVP equipment weren't scared by that. Finally, when stuff starts happening, we don't know what this stuff is. Is it the ghosts? Is it something else? Are their minds playing tricks on them?
Then there was the ending. Since this movie started with the proclamation that everybody is dead already, usually not the best way to start a movie by telling us the way it all ends, I summarized more was probably coming our way as the film neared its conclusion. I just don't know what to make of it. Admittedly I didn't see it coming, but it also didn't make any sense to me. If some kind of way the filmmakers could've put some stuff in place so that you can go back and say 'Damn! I get it now!' then that conclusion turns awesome on us, and for all I know it could've been there, but I just didn't get it. Too bad because if it was handled better it could've saved the movie.
Finally, a shout out to actress Chelsea Vincent who is a lovely girl that might want to pass on the next found footage film that comes her way considering the last time we saw her she was in the equally awful found footage film 'Alien Origin'. Just looking out for Chelsea and the fact that she looks fabulous in blue jeans. Back on point 'Paranormal Entity' was either terribly lame or was secretly awesome and just went over my head. One or the other.
