This film is about a guy who, for inexplicable reasons, decides to go live in the woods for 60 days with basically nothing but a video camera, a knife, and presumably some things in his backpack like a metal cup and the like. He seems to be enjoying it and even making progress.
However he starts being harassed by an evil entity that haunts the Shoals. This is in the description so it's not a spoiler. For some reason I found this manner of haunting to be funny.
It's a standard, typical type of found footage in the woods tale, as every single night the exact same sequence of random shouting, screaming, and voices occur, occasionally joined by some minor bits of action and the appearance of the entity in the form of a cliché woman in a dress reminiscent of The Ring or The Grudge or the anything horror.
some of what kept my interest was the odd little details, such as a point later on when Zach realizes that there are no longer any animals or insects in the woods around him, or the constant monitoring of his caloric intake and how the lack of any animals means he's spending most days wandering around aimlessly and sleeping more often due to lack of energy.
The instances where the evil entity pops up tend to be rather funny, with all of them punctuated by loud music stings, and it becomes apparent after the 3rd or 4th night that it's unclear if this entity is even "evil" or just wandering about making noise as well.
The film narrowly avoids going on for too long with its bit, but then suffers from a rather abrupt, unsatisfying ending that just seemed to feel like they were aware they were going nowhere with the plot and so decided to end it.
This film is what it is. I can easily imagine people being bored by it or turned off by the subtle lack of any real stuff happening. There are some odd elements thrown in, such as random totems scattered throughout the woods, or an old abandoned camp with a conveniently placed journal from previous campers explaining how they experienced the same events as Zach.
Any major drawbacks of the film seem to be up to personal taste, it would seem. The only faults with the film I had were:
- Repetitive sound choice. The constant screams and voices in the woods are obviously drawn from a sound bank, and some of the choices are obvious, such as a female scream sound effect that is probably older than my grandparents and has been used in 800 million movies, TV shows, video games, and so on. A greater variety of sounds could've been used.
- There seems to be a slight disconnect between what we're seeing and hearing on camera and what Zach seems to be reacting to. It's rather realistic that he doesn't immediately jump onto the "spooky ghosts!" train when he first encounters the entity, or somehow becomes an expert in paranormal phenomena, but there comes a point in the film where the entity has literally jumped in front of his face and chased him, and the next morning he's complaining to the camera about being lost, as if nothing had happened the night before. He constantly complains about "something" being out there in the same tone of voice as if he were being stalked by a wild raccoon trying to steal food from him. It feels as though some of those scenes were spliced in at a later point in the film that were meant to take place earlier.