Finders Keepers (2019) Film Review

Let’s get as stupid as we possibly can.

Finders Keepers is another microbudget horror film that seems to have manifested on prime with no fanfare. Whatever.

The subtitles don’t link up with the voices and everyone eats their words, so that’s cool. I’ve done a little captioning work, and the system isn’t that complex. For a film released so recently, it is a sign of sheer incompetence they couldn’t get even this right.

We follow five idiots who are travelling to go dick around an abandoned school. Once again, we have five people who are objectively unlikable, and they all seem to be what one of those google AIs think a real person is. I don’t see any of these people being friends, nor any of them being interested in urban exploration.

Characters don’t have to be complex to be likable. I mean, let’s be honest, most of the characters in Harry Potter or The Walking Dead are given one character trait and people find things to enjoy about them. The reason those characters work is their traits make sense in the world they are in, as well as reinforcing the idea they would be together. Here, we just have a mishmash of douches.

The dialogue is shocking. It is almost worth recommending this film to showcase how poorly written this is. It is simply stunning. Did the social distancing last so long that our language has collapsed? Did a sentient wet napkin write this movie? We will never know the answer to these questions. What we do know is that movie is an abomination against filmmaking.

I’m not entirely sure what this film thinks it is trying to do. It is like an alternate reality where people have devolved into some sort of pre-linguistic and pre-cultural form. I swear they made this shit up as they went.

The directing and acting are perhaps some of the worst I have seen. I’d discuss the plot… but I’m not entirely sure what the hell is going on. We have stupid characters wandering around a closed school (that still has power on the exit signs) that is perhaps the least intimidating setting possible. Schools can be inherently creepy, but with the characters acting like they’re in a Scooby Doo episode it is hard to let anything develop.

We also get bizarre jump scares with ear crashing scores. What are the scares? The characters trying to scare each other. I know that the filmmakers sometimes stumble upon these reviews. For the love of everything, stop with the stupid ass jump scares. Let’s look at this mathematically: your first jump scare has the potential to jolt someone 100%, but if it a dud, all jump scares after will be reduced by 95%. This equation compounds, so all the senseless “startling” just makes the whole movie tedious and pointless.

We have characters startling each other while trying to seduce one another…

It ends up that the main threat here is a bunch of rednecks. They do telegraph this threat, but the whole thing seems like it was made up as it went. I’m not sure there was ever a script written for this.

I think the film wanted to be brutal and edgy, but ends up being annoying, stupid, exploitative, and a pathetic attempt at storytelling.

This is nothing more than pathetic trash. Everyone involved should be ashamed of themselves. This is an absolute waste of filming materials. It would be hard to find a worse film.