Pretty Good

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

I am normally an open minded fan of fan footage movies. I typically give generous 10 star reviews of indie movies that make up for low budget with competent acting and original story lines.Unfortunately, this movie was neither original nor well executed. It was boring and predictable. I about puked in the middle thanks to the shaky camera lens and loud background noises. I didn't expect much from the acting but the characters were so poorly written that it good acting might not have made a difference anyway. The special effects were okay for the most part, except for the alien which looked like a guy wearing a lizard suit.This is where I'm going to spoil the movie for you so you don't have to watch it. Here is the plot in a nutshell: 1. Couple goes to surprise visit Dude's family, which are conveniently not home. They decide to find a way into the house and stay anyway.2. Dude and Dudette do cutesy couple stuff before Dude realizes he wants to snoop in his grandfather's barn which has been labeled off limits since his childhood.3. Dude and Dudette spend gobs of time searching through predictable clues about aliens like top secret letters and outdated military electronics. They walk back and forth between the barn and the house like ten times because they need the Internet and can't put two and two together by themselves.4. Dude and Dudette try to call the FBI and report the alien. Hilarious scene where the alien shows up in the window. Oooh. Ahh. Yikes! How scary! (not) 5. The ending is so Blair Witch - lots of screams and shadows. Person in the lizard suit runs toward the camera all menacingly and apparently drags Dudette off caveman style before being beamed back onto the mothership. The ending scene is ridiculously vague and implies that Dude is either murdered or kidnapped by Men in Black who are there to cover the whole thing up.As you can see, you are not missing much if you skip this movie. The funny thing was, when I first heard about this movie I really wanted to watch it. I thought it was going to be a close encounters kind of movie, which it's not. In any case, don't waste eighty minutes of your life unless you want to get sick.

This movie features two lily-livered cowards as its main protagonists. They share no on screen chemistry, and the actors struggle to deliver wooden, staid dialogue. Joe, our male protagonist, is notable for wearing the same sweaty shirt long after he has the opportunity to change and towards the end of the film insists upon going shirtless (sadly) as a way to affirm his control of the situation. Lisa has fat ankles and reacts in terror to such things as locked gates, barns and the use of spare keys.For most of the film, nothing happens, so we get to enjoy spending quality time with these two annoying people who are of no interest whatsoever. In one such scene, the character of Joe watches his fiancé play with a hula hoop outside and reacting as if she's trying to do some kind of skateboard stunt, all with the, "Oh my god!"s and the "Are you serious?!"s.In another scene, we get to watch the two characters eat snacks. In another, they discuss how abnormal it is for people over the age of fifty to enjoy pizza and cookies (????).Unlike other found footage films like Blair Witch Project or Paranormal Activity, or even Grave Encounters, there's no sense of mounting dread or heightened stakes. All the viewer receives is torturous footage of two people running around a farm. These characters have milk for blood, I swear. They react to the most innocuous of phenomena like Scooby and Shaggy.The conditions keeping them present in the situation which is apparently so terrifying for them (not so much for us) are contrived and plain idiotic. During the last five minutes, the director blows all of his budget at once and it heads towards the mindless, mind-numbing and derivative ending for found-footage films which has become an unfortunate staple of the genre.I would advise anyone not to watch this dreck unless you require a sleeping aid and pills are no longer effective.

I am thoroughly amazed that this film boast several awards! The fact that it is an award winning Indy film, and its interesting description made me an eager viewer...but I am now sorry I wasted 5 bucks through On Demand and my time on a Sunday afternoon....I barely made it through the first 25 minutes before I was on the fence about turning it off....the female actress is, in a word: AWFUL. Her annoying forced laughs, sighs and tee hees for the benefit of the camera became just excruciating to listen to...it was painfully obvious that they were trying really hard to "act" like a couple in love, but when there's no chemistry, there's no magic for the screen. It is simply NOT believable. To make this film work, you need that....you need the audience to invest in the characters, to care about them, to BELIEVE they are REAL.PEOPLE. Especially with found footage genre, these are supposed to be real film footage clips...and people in real life do not act that way with each other...whoever cast her was an idiot because it blew the film. She isn't a very pretty girl either, so the shots of her porky legs and feet while she sighs and babbles to herself about how excited she is looking at her ring made it even more difficult to watch. Good looks draw people in but its the chemistry on screen, that believability factor, that keeps them riveted. This girl has neither and that becomes annoying and boring to watch. That's a waste of my time and money. The male actor wasn't much better....but he was better than her and with the right female lead he might have been better than he was...I had to fast forward through him eating an apple, for me, that was the scariest scene in the movie...just disgusting. I will say she gives a good scream and the more action that went on towards the end, the better they were because they had something to work with in the scenes besides just themselves. When it was just the 2 of them improv-ing their relationship (which could have been cute, funny, sweet and magical, I mean he proposed!) But it was the most unromantic, boring proposal ever! Because they were NOT believable as a couple. The reason The Blair Witch Project was so successful was in great part due to the fantastic job the actors did...they had real chemistry with each other, they were real friends...the audience came to care about them as people because they were very real with each other and not at all "acting" for the camera. This film needed that, too many viewers will be lost before any action even takes place because the director failed to realize the importance of chemistry even in the most simple and monotonous of daily human interactions. What a shame!

I was on board for a hot second with this one. I love alien movies and found footage genre type stuff. This, however was lacking in almost all areas that you would expect to find in something described as "is it real?" type genre film. I find it mildly unbelievable that anyone could actually think that this movie was the real deal or any 'found footage' film for that matter. It's a movie. It's been produced and been shown in theaters, obviously it isn't going to be real. Anyways, what's more awful than that marketing idea was the atrocious acting. I kept waiting for it to get better and for something to actually happen but I couldn't even bring myself to believe in the story because they both were so bad. The woman playing 'Lisa' was probably the worst, however 'Joe or Joel', I could never really tell, was not anymore spectacular. Their chemistry was horrid, their motivation completely irrational and scripted beyond belief, and their reactions to each other and to the events were barely able to be taken seriously. If you want something to preoccupy your time for a bit then you can watch this but honestly I wouldn't expect anything more than something your friends could put together with a less than stunning hand-held.