Nonureva Really Surprised!

MamaGravity good back-story, and good acting

Senteur As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Kamila Bell This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

sadzombie Do you want to know how many times the characters in Spirit in the Woods say "I think I saw something", only to pan the camera over and reveal nothing except for trees and... more nothing? Just nothing. A lot of nothing. That's a rhetorical question, because I won't go back and lose another hour of my life counting. It's an adequate summary of this... I don't know what you would call this, actually. I'd like to say "movie", but things tend to happen in movies. Even if they're boring, you can walk out discussing something about it. What did or didn't work for you. Nothing - and I mean nothing - happens in this... er, sequence of moving images. So the lowdown here is that Anthony Daniel asked himself, "Remember The Blair Witch Project? What if I did a movie like that, but like, without the tension or anything?" Then he went to Kickstarter, told people he had a good idea for a horror movie, and some of those poor, misguided people gave him money they like, actually worked and stuff for, and then he took that money, and turned it into an hour of footage of a bunch of people walking in the woods. It's an often heard criticism that nothing happened in The Blair Witch Project. It was build up to a non-ending. The same argument is often made for other found-footage flicks, such as Paranormal Activity. People talk for an hour or so, occasionally something weird happens, and then the climax. Roll credits. The difference between those movies and Spirit in the Woods is the burn. Whether they worked for you or not, these movies spent the duration of their runtime gradually turning up the tension. Whether Blair Witch affected you or not, you could sense emotion in effect on the camera. The characters begin to panic, they argue, they despair. In Paranormal Activity, they gradually become more accepting that there is something happening in their house, and how they emotionally deal with it. In Spirit in the Woods, they talk. Much like you and your friends talk. Generally about nothing. That's it. One character may, at times, whine that they want to go home, but that's it. It was a bold choice to just make a movie devoid of energy or tension of any sort. I mentioned the characters often saying "I think I saw something", yes? That's what we get, in place of slowly building dread, or even cheap jump scares. Not once, not twice. Repeatedly. The movie telling us something MAY be there, but it's not. I even looked hard, just to see if maybe something was hidden on screen. During it's final fifteen or so minutes, when something FINALLY happens it's out of nowhere, and earned for no other reason than the movie is almost over and the money is almost out, and we still don't see anything. The camera freezes, or the footage gets shoddy, muddling our view. Imagination, in a horror movie, can be very effective. Minimalism works because the human mind will fill in the blanks, often more effectively than you could by telling them the answer. It worked in a movie like Blair Witch because we knew damn well that whatever was off screen when they screamed "What the f*** is that?!" was sure as hell there. The movie provided just enough along the way for our mind to fill in the rest. Spirit in the Woods gives us a few rambling ideas of what it's mythology could have been after the fact, and nothing along the way to make us afraid of what may be around the corner.Like The Blair Witch Project, Spirit in the Woods is, I gather, based on some existing folklore and ghost stories. Do yourself a favor, and don't watch this movie. If you want to watch this movie, go watch The Blair Witch Project instead. It's literally the same thing, but with pacing and tension and all those things that make a movie interesting. If you STILL want to go watch Spirit in the Woods, then do me a favor, and keep a running tally of how many times they say "I thought I just saw something", because I'm honestly curious how many times they blatantly admitted there was nothing on screen.

sam_hunt This movie actually made my head and body hurt because of how bad it was. The script is terrible the acting is awful, and I'm pretty sure in some early scenes some of the actors were laughing.... I'm assuming because they themselves couldn't believe they agreed to this. The bet part of the movie was the trail they were on in the beginning. It's pretty. Reportedly the budget for the film was 6k, and in my opinion you can make something much better than this. The Blair Witch Project had a very low budget as well and to this day is still one of the greatest "found footage" films recorded. I am a huge fan of found footage films and wish more were being made, however if they are all like this from now on, the genre is doomed.

Marie Greene I knew this movie was in trouble when across the screen toward the beginning, it printed that the filmmakers did "are" best to recover the footage. "Are "instead of "our?" Really? Unfortunately, my fears were confirmed. The actors didn't really act, and didn't seem to care that they didn't care. I kept hoping during the first hour that it would somehow get better perhaps when the action picked up, but the action in the first hour didn't pick up. The acting got no better. So, the entire first hour absolutely sucked, and the final part wasn't even scary. Waste of time. I think my own teenagers could have pulled it off better. It seemed a throwaway, just get it done mishmash.

jmbwithcats Objectively speaking, this movie has terrible acting, the first 55 minutes is wandering the woods, rambling, where nothing happens, the camera pans around and you think you might see something, which can be kind of cool, but so deep into the movie and nothing has happened is a stretch to even call it a movie... then when anything does happen, you see a white faced wraith like face, and that is IT. That's it. That's all you get... some shook up guys, a guy with blood on his hands and shirt, blurry camera-work, a long narrative, and that is it. I am astonished how the producer even considered funding this movie. It's devoid of redeeming qualities, it blows my freaking' mind. The producer actually told me he funded it just to make an easy return to fund his own projects.... Yes, that's the truth, any movie no matter how bad will make money, because you can make a very formulaic horror film for so little these days and get some kind of return, can't argue with you there, but it is dragging down the genre big time when all one is doing it for is the money.