The Black Water Vampire (2014)

Over a period of 40 years young women have been found mysterious killed at 10 year intervals of the winter solstice. Raymond Banks has been convicted for the last two. A crew of four people decide to do a film on the incident on what happens to be the 10 year anniversary. They hire a professional camera man because apparently they couldn't cut off heads and jerk the camera around on their own. It was a fairly nice size camera, that I had to think, "Is someone really running holding this thing while being chased by a vampire?"The production has your typical bad found footage films plus needless build up garbage that doesn't tie into anything. Bill Oberst Jr. did a nice job of Raymond Banks for what little time he was on the screen. The rest of the cast read and screamed their formulaic lines as we await the tail end of the feature to see the creature...which to their credit wasn't the last three frames.A rental for fans of found footage. Parental Guide: F-bomb. No sex or nudity.

The vampires look pretty decent. The premise was OK. The setting was fine. The actors were quite adequate for a found footage flick. Yet it was not a pleasurable experience.Why?The main problem with the film is that it is very unoriginal and lazy. It is a pale copy of Blair Witch Project with vampires instead of the witch.Also, the film wastes time on characters that are totally unimportant. The part of the film where they get seriously involved with the vampires comes after a totally unnecessary and dull exposition. One gets the impression of being cheated. You have people in the middle of the woods being stalked by winged vampires that hang from trees and look pretty menacing, yet you only get to see them doing things at the very end, while the build-up to it is poorly done, unlike the build-up in Blair Witch Project, which was very effective and nerve-wrecking. The final proof of the erratic and confused approach to this film by the filmmakers comes in the final scene, where the film gets into Rosemary's Baby territory. Like so many bad found footage films, this film is lazy and throws in whatever cliché it can think of, while the end result is a film that has no consistency or sense of knowing what it is and what the story is about.A wasted opportunity.

I have to say, after reading some reviews I wasn't expecting much, but I was pleasantly surprised. It wasn't great, for sure, it took from pretty much every backwoods horror/Blair Witch Project type movie, but at the end of the day, I really like those kind of movies.I was most impressed by the monster. The makeup was actually quite spectacular and creepy, it looked great. There were only a few jump scares but they weren't cheap, there were genuine jump scares without that annoying loud "bwong" sound. (You know what I'm talking about.)It starts out kinda shaky, the beginning of the film builds and loses atmosphere and it feels kind of awkward, the acting isn't anything special; but the last 40 minutes were great. The ending was kind of darkly comedic and a little goofy, but it tied everything up very well without just coming out and explaining the movie.Overall nothing new or innovative, just another entry in the ever growing library of found footage movies, but entertaining at the very least.

I would rate this lower but the director intended of portraying tribute to films like Blair Witch, which I got but there was nothing impressive or original that would make this film memorable. The whole found footage thing was well not at its best and I would've expected more chills and thrills in this format with more of an active crew. A good attempt but didn't get the job done. This was more of a tribute film than a horror movie, and simply put the whole hillbilly vampire child thing didn't make sense at all. This is a movie you could avoid and never even know you missed something. Better luck next time boys. I do agree with a review I read about this film that it should've been a normally shot endeavor rather than food footage, yes it would've changed the complexion of this movie greatly.