As a non-hunter, the idea of game cameras fascinates me and freaks me out. I get why people use them for hunting, but man, they freak me out. The idea that you’re leaving a camera in a remote area and could capture any number of things feels inherently creepy. I get that you’re likely to get nothing or just a squirrel, deer, or the occasional bear or other animal. Still, there’s the whole “what if” of it all that freaks me out. The idea is that out in the dark woods, there could be people or things lurking about unseen, and you suddenly have something to capture them.
*shiver*
While the game camera in the title of the film is but a small part of the story here, it’s still an interesting wrinkle in the – HEY, we’re in the woods and looking for trouble – a trope that has become popular in Found Footage movies.
The film is set up as found footage discovered and released by a shadowy group online after some strange phenomena had happened in the area where it was filmed. The movie picks up with a man heading out with his buddies for a weekend of hunting. He isn’t a hunter but wants to head out with his buddies to film the weekend and what it’s like to BE a hunter. From there, the film chronicles the friends getting together and then heading out into the woods to make camp and prepare for the hunt. While they are out hunting, though, the men come across an abandoned camp where a father and son had been, and there’s no sign of them around. The friends find a game camera in the camp and decide to check out the footage on the SD card in it to see if they can find any answers. What they discover is that they are not alone in the woods and that whatever is out there may be far more dangerous than they could have imagined.
This is a film of two halves. The first half has some great banter and dialogue, and the interaction is really good. You get some really good moments of the friends speaking to one another and baring their souls. It works really well and establishes the characters. Unfortunately, they keep going to the well of – he’s the dirty Commie lib, and that guy is the gun-loving rightie – and it gets tired. The nuance is lost. The lead-up to finding the game camera is great, and the discovery of what’s on the footage is good. It’s after it that the trouble begins.
Like too many found footage films, the movie falls apart once it gets into the meat of the mystery, and we’re given too many questions without answers. We are never offered any sort of explanation for anything we are seeing, and things get crazier and crazier, we’re just supposed to go along with it. The effects look cheap and feel cheap as the film becomes too focused on the caricature it’s painted of these men, eschewing real people for straw people.
The film looks OK and fits how the film is portrayed as far as how it was shot. The actors do a good job overall, and the story is interesting. The problem is that it just falls apart at the end as none of it makes any sense, and we’re left guessing at what is happening. It doesn’t overstay its welcome but feels more frustrating than anything else.
While I won’t recommend it, it’s still a decent watch if you’re looking for something you haven’t seen before on Tubi.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2447162/
2 out of 5
The Spooky World of Chris Ringler 