Friday, January 10, 2014

The Bell Witch Haunting (2013)

Brandon and his family move to a new city just in time for Brandon's birthday party where he gets some fancy new video camera so he can start working on becoming a filmmaker. Like all found footage movies, this means he's going to shoot all the time, even when terrible things happen and he should be getting help or calling the police.  It also means we're going to be subject to lots of filler since we'll essentially be watching home movies of mundane things until the supernatural stuff starts.

Anyone who gets motion sickness is going to have a hard time watching this film as the footage truly looks like it was shot by a teenager with no knowledge of cinematography. The damn camera waves around and constantly shakes, which made me feel like I was going to puke.

In the first two weeks in their new house: the garbage disposal spits up blood all over Dad; there's what appears to be a pool of  blood near the foundation; strange noises are heard from the basement; kids who were guests in their home end up dead; their daughter wakes up screaming every night;  Dad cuts his arm, wanders off in the night, gets tasered and blobs of ectoplasm or blood fall out of his mouth; the worst electrician in the world is hilariously electrocuted; and every time they call 911 for help, the phone goes dead in the middle of the call.  Yet when a distraught Mom calls a priest, she ignores the big stuff to tell him that they have a lamp that keeps blinking off and on.

The common denominator in all the teen deaths is that they were last seen alive at Brandon's house. Yet the police don't seem to be able to put this together. Perhaps it's because there seems to only be one policeman in town. Office Bungalon is the one who finds all the bodies, responds to all the calls, and has a name which makes me think he's going to bungle everything.

So in case you haven't guess, this does not get high marks for watchability - except for Officer Bungalon.

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