johnke.meThe Outwaters
Do you like watching an entire film through a tiny pinprick of light? Then boy do I have the film for you.
The Blair Witch Project comparisons are obvious - a bunch of young people head off into the wilderness with video cameras and go slowly insane - but the second half goes off in such a weird hallucinogenic, experimental cosmic horror tangent that it suffers slightly in the comparison. People expecting a straightforward found footage horror will be disappointed.
A better point of comparison is The Evil Dead (there are a couple of shots toward the end that seem to directly reference this as an influence). And this is what unlocked the film for me. Once I realised this film was just a bunch of genre sickos armed with a microbudget, a camera and buckets of caro syrup and having lots of fun, I vibed with the film a lot more. Unfortunately the many, many (way too many) frustrating torch scenes meant I’d already semi-checked out by the time I saw what they were actually trying to do and it wasn’t enough to fully save the film for me.