Dark Mountain (2013)

Not scary - or smart - like another reviewer said. Boring, yes, insipid, yes and if you are waiting for something exciting to happen - see a different movie. I say this as someone who quite LIKE found footage stuff.*spoilers* Do not read on unless you want to have some of it spoiled!!In the movie the female lead says to another character 'this isn't going to be like Blair witch' Well it is - only less imaginative. It even has her crying into the camera at one point - I mean, seriously? The last frame of the movie has her crawling towards a camera which is on the ground - you can guess what happens next. I actually said it out loud. I wasn't wrong.

The positive reviews for this movie are mind-boggling. The characters were poorly developed, the script was unnecessary, the scares were cheap, the plot was driven by gimmicks and the climax was non-existent. This film possibly had the worst ending I have ever seen, it certainly posed more questions than it answered, but I'm not sure what those even are. Just as the story began to take shape, though not a very interesting shape, the credits rolled. I searched for something positive to say about this film, though I came up with nothing substantial. I do remember being entertained at first, somewhat interested, even confident that the movie would take off. That never happened. I recommend you skip this film, even you are an avid viewer of found footage/mockumentary films.

Dark Mountain is beautifully directed and filmed, it really took me by surprise. This isn't another nauseating, shaky-cam mess. There are a lot of terrific shots and brilliantly edited moments -- especially, the opening montage as the characters drive to the Superstition Mountains. The glitches that periodically disrupt the footage are also particularly effective.When the characters arrive at the mountains, a growing sense of unease builds. Soon, they are lost, confused and frightened. The actors are all well-cast and give strong performances -- their descent into hysteria and madness is completely believable.Dark Mountain is terrifying and thrilling, with memorable scares. Highly recommended.

Here are some things I hated about this film and noted as I watched it.1) Loud noises for cheap scares (just about the only attempts at fright in the film). Dark Mountain goes one further - due to over enthusiastic, amateurish sound design it transparently adds to the organic "real" sound shocks allegedly captured by the camera (such as radios and walkie-talkies suddenly turning on and feeding back) - meaning you are presented what is supposed "tragic" found footage, but apparently someone then decided (all too obviously) to add more "scary sounds" on top of what the camera captured. Since we are being asked to take this as real footage, the obvious question is... who added obvious sound effects to that footage? Better yet, who thought it was a good idea to fill the soundtrack with bargain basement, dreary, "dark sounding" imitation Nick Cave music? If you were cobbling together genuine found footage of dead or disappeared people, would you add "spooky" music with vocals to the sound track during scenes when the protagonists are just walking around? No, you wouldn't. No one would. It's an idiotic creative choice, the kind of thing someone with no feel for horror or the genre might resort to.2) Pointless, artlessly framed shots of the landscape which do not establish a mood in any way, many of which go on far too long and appear to be nothing but padding. Case in point, several throw away shots of birds flying over head (and later several out of focus shots of dead animals the filmmakers appear to have stumbled upon while shooting). During the last of these bird shots I actually yelled at my TV "Stop lingering on pointless shots!"3) The film utterly fails to establish how far the protagonists have gone in to the wild, a key element to making us believe in their isolation, for which I can only credit bad editing and poor direction. Two painfully amateurish dissolves in particular (combining showing them walking and empty shots of the landscape) are jarringly terrible, and so poorly timed they fail to give any sense of the passage of time. This failure is all the more incredible, considering how poorly paced the film is (about half the movie passes before anything "happens.")4) Pointless poor quality "instagram-ish" video shot from a phone and inserted over and over. This transparent attempt to bring visual variety to the film's images is one of many fatal creative decisions. Whenever this effect is used, it renders the images allegedly made as part of this documentary poorly, meaning loss of detail and clarity - something documentary filmmakers would have to be utter morons to do. If they were to use their phone video function, wouldn't they turn it off and opt for a clearer mode when a) scanning the hill tops for sign of where a gun shot came from - or b) when making a final video confession when thinking death is near, with that video intended to be seen by whomever finds your camera and shared with your parents etc? "Hi Mom, I thought it'd be nice to have this pointless super 8 aged video effect on the last known images of your terrified daughter. Looks pretty doesn't it? I'm dead now. Enjoy!"5) Our intrepid and allegedly driven female filmmaker captures an image of a spirit presence during their first entry in to a cave, then refuses to review the footage or allow anyone else to see it, even after confessing that she shot it and had been keeping it a secret (for no apparent reason). Her answer is literally "I'll look at everything when we get home. End of story." So no one sees it. This is laughable, obviously, and is an example of nonsensical behavior necessitated by a contrived story.6) Character crawls toward camera, terrified, after it is dropped to the ground, and upon getting close to the camera the character is dragged off in the darkness by unseen thing. This is the last shot in the film, folks. I'm not kidding, and you've seen it many times before. 7) Poorly executed and wholly unneeded "camera interference" that results in the standard inserts of black, digital artifacts etc, accomplishing little but irritation as there is nothing interesting or scary going on in those shots - it seems like a "hey, we can make this SEEM scary even though it isn't in any way" post production decision.8) Red herrings or ambiguity can be great, in the right hands or in the right story. Here it just seems like "stick it all in a blender" was the idea. Who was the shirtless man they spot on a hill top who they think was following them? Dunno, because it's forgotten as quickly as it is pointed out. Why are there lights in the sky? Because UFOs, I think. Don't waste any time on figuring out they "whys," they are just there. By the time you get to the end, much of this just seems like filler, something to put in the movie, or more accurately, in the trailer for the movie.9) The one example we are given of this "time vortex" element is a campsite they find which appears to have been undisturbed and seems to exist in the 1970's. The proof we are given is a diary, read aloud by one of the leads, and then a tape recording on a cassette player. You could be excused for thinking you've stumbled in to a video game, attempting to cheaply and quickly dispose of some exposition, but this is a major turning point in the film and we will be lead back here later. The depiction of the camp site and its discovery is so botched and unconvincing that it never even gets close to being eerie.