Terrible plot, bad camera work (especially since the main character is a cameraman), bad lighting. I felt like I was looking through a glory hole for 90 minutes.

This is what happens when someone tells you that you just need to get out there and shoot a film. You don't need money, actors, script, fx, or any of the other trapping that make up a films closing credits. Just run around, throw gallons of syrup on your feet, throw in an occasional wiener/boob visual (you know for those edgy scenes to make it legit adult horror) and presto; some people will show up.

The best part of this film was probably some of the sounds. Too bad film is a visual medium.

This movie is somehow very comparable to Skinamarink and that's not a good thing at all. You have absolutely no idea what's going on the entire runtime and it's full of horrible filmmaking with extremely dark shots with a flashlight every once in a while. If the darkness bothers you, don't worry because you'll end up getting screams and running with no context. If that doesn't bother you then you'll just be treated to random footage thrown together going from night to day and so on and so on. I really don't know what the heck was going on in this movie. If it's this easy to make a movie then maybe I need to pick up my iPhone and just start shooting random footage and ask a studio to buy my horribly shot movie and release it theatrically to piss everyone off. Apparently it's that's easy in 2023.

This film had potential to really go deep and scare you to it's core. The ingredients are all there but, and I'm assuming because of it's budget, writer/director Robert Banfitch just can't pull it off.

The reviewers are spreading these wild claims about how disturbing and horrible the things are in this film, and although some of it was mildly alarming, it's just nothing we haven't seen before. The blood and viscera are plenty but it's rarely shown coming out of anyone and is used more as set decoration than from acts of violence. In fact, all of the violence takes place off screen minus at the very very end of the film, which leads into a very anticlimatic ending. You see the crew covered in blood, but the entire time you have no idea why because it's all being shot by quite possibly the worst cameraman in the history of the found footage genre. The pinhole flashlight technique did not bother me as much as I thought it would, but that wasn't the problem. The problem was the guy with the camera never focuses on anything but the ground the entire time, with extremely brief glimpses of blood trails or maybe someone in the distance. This is what leads me to believe that they just didn't have the budget to show anything that might've elevated this film to where it needed to be.

My other gripe with the film is the question I always ask myself when watching a film like this. Why are you continuing to film this??? A major issue that I have with found footage movies is they rarely explain why anyone would keep filming the events unfolding in front of them. This film is no different. That dude would've lost that camera somewhere between the running and the dimension travelling, and he wouldn't have looked back considering what he was experiencing. Just illogically stupid.

My last point to make here is that the film is narratively incoherent. Even during the initial build up, you're not quite sure what is going on. This is what bothered me the most about the film. There is no story here. The first 40 minutes you're getting to know the characters, but you have no clue what they are doing from one minute to the next. I didn't know we were even going to the desert until we got there. And when the horror stuff starts happening, it gets even less coherent. The only thing that the story does that is coherent is the time flip at the end. That I could pick out and finally get a grip on what the character might be experiencing. Other than that, the viewers are left in the dark just like our protagonist.

Overall, I am highly disappointed. The film is way too over hyped, undercooked and, frankly, frustrating. I wanted more than what I got offered. The film might hit you different but as it stand for me, the film was too long and too pointless to be considering anything like what the reviewers are saying it is.

1 eldritch being out of 5.