At The Movies with Bryan, the Wannabe Filmmaker

The Blair Witch Project is one of the worst things that ever happened to cinema, not only is it vastly overrated and irritating, but it spawned the whole found footage subgenre that has been plaguing the movie theatres for the last decade.   However, at least The Blair Witch Project had a clever marketing campaign (it was promoted as being real footage) that stirred up audience interest, the later found footage movies tend to relegated to DVD purgatory, until they are eventually picked up by Netflix.   There are a few found footage movies I do like ( V/H/S, V/H/S 2, and Evidence), but these are the exceptions rather than the rule.   The V/H/S movies are an anthology series that have some genuinely creepy stories, effects, and editing.   Evidence has a framing device that justifies the found footage:   two detectives hope that videos taken by the victims at a murder scene can lead them to the killer. Also, a credible reason is given for the victims to continue recording, desp

The majority of Slasher movies are pure crap! The documentary Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film tries to offer up a defense for the subgenre, but the cold hard truth is that most criticism of Slasher films is pretty valid. They are fairly indistinguishable from one another, devoid of any real suspense, and are extremely predictable.  That being said, it is hard to think of a movie (regardless of genre) that is as dull as Final Exam.  Sure, most Slasher movies are terrible, but they usually move at a fast pace and have a few likable characters in the cast;  Final Exam not only lacks both, but it is fairly bloodless, which means it won’t even appeal to gore fans.  The director, Jimmy Huston, said that he wanted to avoid the stereotypes of the genre by making the killings bloodless and having most of them occur off screen – it’s too bad his determination to avoid clichés didn’t carry over to the characters.  All the tropes of the genre are here in their full