Friday, January 22, 2021

The Monster Project (2017)

 

After leaving town and ditching his girlfriend, jerk Devon shows up  and starts making fake paranormal videos with his friend Jamal.  They’re making money from views, but Devon thinks they can make more by doing a tv show about monsters.

They put an ad online asking anyone who is a real monster to contact them.  Devon says monsters aren’t real so it’s no big deal to interview these people. However if someone actually thinks they are a monster, they could be dangerous.

Devon will be in front of the camera doing the interviews. His crew is Jamal and his ex girlfriend Murielle who puts her career goals ahead of her rage at being ghosted by Devon. There’s also Brian, a recovering drug addict fresh out of rehab, who is staying with Jamal.

They rent a creepy abandoned building where satanic rituals used to be held, and do the interviews on the night of a lunar eclipse.  Nothing could possibly go wrong.  The man who unlocked the building starts yelling for his wife once he gets inside.  No one shall ask why his wife was padlocked inside an abandoned building, or why the characters weren’t concerned about this turn of events.

The monsters show up and unnerve everyone.  When they interview the skinwalker, his voice is disguised and he is in shadow. He doesn’t want anyone to know his identity because he isn’t supposed to talk about being a monster.  The first rule of skinwalkers is don’t talk about skinwalkers.  Yet he tells them he is a policeman on the reservation. I hope they have a large police force or that would narrow down his identify significantly.

As is the case with people who cavalierly talk to self proclaimed monsters during a lunar eclipse in a satanic setting, things go horribly wrong. The monsters are real and soon everyone is running for their lives.

As with most found footage films, the camera work is often nauseating.  The characters aren’t particularly likable so you don’t care about them.  I suppose credit is due for a different set up rather than the typical trope of exploring a haunted location and discovered it’s truly haunted. But then again, they just sort of changed location to subject, as in let’s interview monsters and oh my god they truly are monsters.

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