Let’s go to hell.
I took a bit of a risk with VooDoo as I have only heard about the film through Facebook advertisements. The previews looked… okay? Apparently, I did not pay much attention to the previews because I did not realize it was found footage before I began playing it.
The film follows Dani, a southern stereotype who visits L.A. to get away from stress in her life. There are other characters, but they don’t matter, neither does Dani. For example, Dani’s friend Stacy says the line “Welcome to California” about five hundred thousand times in the first half an hour. The dialogue and acting are so bad that I think the whole production might have been a scam to get idiots like me to watch it. I first did a time check eleven minutes in, this is usually a bad sign.
Aside from dumb acting and dialogue, the characters aren’t very likable. I think they were going for a pseudo-realistic type of talking and character traits, but it comes off as absurdly forced. I think elementary school students could churn out better characters.
I don’t always hate found footage. I think the genre allows for some interesting camera tricks and can build a lot of tension in interesting ways. Unfortunately, a lot of narratives use found footage as a way to skirt production quality and costs—and this is certainly what VooDoo does. There is usually a narrative reason for found footage, but this film seems to think you will just accept it. Not sure most people video tape everything (and I mean everything) when they go on vacation.
Another frustrating aspect of this movie is that is wastes about 80% of the narrative on stupid garbage before getting to the supposedly scary moments. I also don’t understand why writers think idiotic characters are going to be likable. I simply felt nothing toward any of the characters, so caring when they were in danger was not possible.
I am willing to bet my next paycheck that this movie is offensive concerning the treatment of actual voodoo, but I am not qualified to comment on this. I can say that when the previews say you will go to hell they are right. This is one of the worst films I have ever seen.
I feel like I am writing “one of the worst films” more and more lately. I hope it isn’t losing its sting, because this movie sucks. It sucks in quite odd ways, too. It isn’t often in found footage that I wonder who is holding the camera, but it is clearly set up on a tripod. I am not sure if this was actually jarring or if my brain was searching for something to think about as the movie droned on.
The intrigue and the scares of the film are shoveled in with a mallet. There is absolutely no subtlety in any of the story telling. The fact that the film wants to shove how intense it is in the audiences’ face compounds this to remind me of the thirteen-year-old who thinks they are super edgy, and wants you to know it all times.
The scary moments aren’t scary, and for most of it the acting and design is so bad that it is more laughable than anything else. It reminded more of the original Doom videogame than a recent horror film. The movie tries to amp up the edge factor in tasteless and sleazy ways. Maybe this would impress junior high schoolers, but this is just crap. Oh look, a dead baby joke. How original. The movie tries to make a joke out of sexual assault. It sexualizes rape in a disgusting, immature, and potentially dangerous way. Fuck everyone involved in this. We should all call out this shit for exactly what it is.
A complete pile of garbage from start to finish. Instead of being a bunch of try-hards the people who made this should pick a different career, far away from anything involving film. 0/10
Note: Perhaps the most disturbing thing about the movie is the fake positive reviews on IMDB. This is a trend that is unfortunate and will end up hurting movies in the long run. The fact that we now have to doubt reviews is worries me. This is going to sound self-aggrandizing, and perhaps it is in a more tongue-in-cheek way, but maybe people should trust bloggers more than aggregate sites on these smaller films. Without a lot of reviews there is simply too much room for score manipulation.
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