Atrocious (2010)

 

I haven't given up on the Found footage genre yet. Sure, there are maybe a few too many haunted asylum or haunted movies that are way too similar, so many that I really have a hard time remembering which ones I've seen already. But then we get movies like Evidence (which always will be my prime example of a movie that shows that you can do something extraordinary within a pretty tight set of rules) and the movie I am about to review, Fernando Barreda Lunas wonderfully creepy Atrocious.

Atrocious starts with the fairly overused gimmick that the footage we are about to see is the property of a police from a criminal investigation. From then we move back in time to follow the Quintanilla family of five as they travel to their country house, with the two oldest kids roaming around with videocameras in order to make some sort of documentary about a legendary ghostgirl that is supposed to roam around in the area. The overgrown maze nearby is of course a good place to start looking and will soon be the setting for a shitload of übercreepiness. Things start ever so "gently" with the family dog going missing (the audience watch him bark at the gate to the maze for hours) and soon the kids find him dead in a well in the center of the maze. Later that night the youngest child go missing and everyone start looking for him in the dark. Cue retarded running around in the dark using nightvision, splitting up and a lot of very shaky camerawork up until the very tense conclusion.

There is one big hurdle to overcome if you are to enjoy Atrocious to the fullest and that is the main character Christian, the one filming all of this together with his sister July. He is simply an annoying git who just spews a lot of random nonsense. Fortunately the mystery of the whole enterprise is so enthralling that you forget all about it and it sure is one hell of a creepy ride. The long sequence in the maze towards the end of the movie where Christian is trying to find his siblings using only a camera with nightvision is simply unsettling beyond belief and the movie holds its momentum all the way. The explanation for all the events is simple and effective and Atrocious ends up being one of my favorite found footage flicks so far. Actually, simple and effective is a really good way to describe the movie and if you, like me, havent given up on the genre yet, get hold of Atrocious. It doesn't re-invent the genre but it does it's job so much better than a lot of other similar movies.