Wow! Such a good movie.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

I can't believe all the good reviews this movie got. They must all be relatives of the actor/director. I've rarely seen such an amateur production. Bad stilted acting, bargain basement budget re special effects, predictable and highschoolish. Dodge a bullet and skip this clunker!!! 2/10 and that's being generous.

Couldn't find any reviews online for this from critics I trusted so thought i'd just give it a go. The story is simple but then it didn't have to be amazing, the acting from Nigel Bach is pretty decent all things considered and he manages to carry the movie along and keep you interested. Also there is some good camera work and a couple of good scares, and an ending which is definitely worth the wait. What lets this movie down though is just how illogical it is at times; mainly down to the fact that Nigel Bach's reactions to his situation in the film are so alien. He only shows even a glimpse of fear at the very end, before this you'd think that the stuff happening to him just happens all the time to everyone. Its not a bad acting performance just a very strange one. I would go on a rant about how the fact that he films more or less everything with his phone is never justified, but this is so often a problem in found footage movies that its not worth going on about; that said it is more illogical in this movie than most as demonstrated in a number of scenes where he is struggling to perform simple day to day tasks cause he's holding the camera phone in his other hand. Additionally there are a few moments which are unintentionally funny, like when he is wandering around the house looking for the source to the strange happenings with a camera phone in one hand and a can of air freshener in the other ready to spray any ghosts who get in his way. Or a scene where he is trying to banish a ghost from his house, shouting angrily at it, while holding a candle stick in one hand and a selfie stick in the other. Overall though this is a pretty decent horror movie and an impressive achievement considering it is made by and starring only one person. And the ending is genuinely creepy...

I hate found footage films as a rule of thumb, and if I review them it's either because they really suck or because I actually didn't mind them. This film falls into the latter category. I went into this film not knowing it was a solo film and a first venture, it was available on Prime and I was bored. I only found out the rest after, which made me extra impressed!This film is simple, the effects are (generally, there is one that stands out rather negatively, you'll know it when you see it) are subtle and pretty well done. The reason for all of the cameras is pretty solid, and it's not one of those over the top "And then I was PINNED IN THE CEILING BY AN UNSEEN FORCE!" type of things. It's refreshing in it's simplicity.While I wouldn't call it believable, the vast majority of this film feels more realistic than others of the genre and that's a nice touch. Although a bit more knowledge on the occult might have helped.Not perfect, not very scary, but still much better than a lot of found footage films of late.

--That perfectly sums up my feelings on this movie. As of late, I've been using Amazon Prime a lot more to watch movies such as Blue Ruin, Green Room, Swiss Army Man, and Henry to name a few. I've even decided to watch a few found footage movies as well because I hate myself. I've seen a mediocre one such as Hell House LLC and a "You tried" like Phoenix Tapes 97, but I found one movie so bad, so fundamentally BROKEN, I felt the need to actually write what's basically an essay on just WHY this film is so terrible. "Bad Ben" was released in 2016 and was directed by and starring Nigel Bach, a man I will refer to as "Neil Breen with a phone" because that's what this movie is: SHOT ON A PHONE. Now don't get me wrong, there's been a film shot on a phone before called Tangerine, and it wasn't too bad. But unlike Bad Ben, Tangerine used special lenses, editing, sound design, and an actual script to look and feel like a movie. Bad Ben was just done by one guy with a phone totally improvised and used a camera he put on a tripod on a chair in the corner to simulate the look of a security camera. How do I know he did this? Because I did the EXACT same thing in my Freshmen year film class. The film's plot is like any other found footage movie. Guy buys a house, house is haunted, he's skeptical about it, then BOO. SPOOKY STUFF HAPPENS. What sets this film apart from other found footage movies is there are long segments where the guy is just improvising about some weird thing he put there in advance. Not to mention the character is COMPLETELY unlikable. At one point he finds a grave in his backyard made up of stones, a cross, and a music box toy, but then proceeds to say "I'm selling that on eBay" and then picks up the toy and starts kicking the stones away. At the very beginning he even throws away a Bible and a cross! So now we have an unlikable character, a generic plot, and terrible cinematography. "Is the acting any good," I hear you ask. To which I reply with hysterical laughter. This guy really shouldn't quit his day job because he's terrible. He literally finds a pentagram, a broken cross, and an urn in his attic and he replies with "Oh boy. Not good." How about effects? Well, I'm only slightly impressed. For some effects I could tell "Oh, it's just his friends with strings" or "Oh, he reversed the footage/sped it up" but there was one part where someone's ashes were knocked over and the ghost, in real-time, writes out "Not your home" and at first I was actually trying to figure out the effect. But then I figured out they just used an app to mix layers so as they screen-recorded the footage they were writing the words in the app. So yes. Even for found footage this is an absolute train-wreck. There's a part where for three whole minutes he's just walking through the house turning on the cameras not saying anything and another part where he's just driving home and he says to himself two or three times "Yep. Just driving down a dark creepy road.""Bad Ben" is hands down one of the worst films I've ever seen. Painfully boring, unintentionally funny, terrible cinematography, and overall just BAD. It's so bad, you HAVE to watch it. Get a group of friends together so you can make fun of it as you watch it. Overall, I give "BAD BEN" a 1/10. It's so bad, you NEED to see it.