Horror Off-Season: Afflicted

Afflicted is a 2013/2014 found footage movie written and directed by Derek Lee and Clif Prowse, who also star as Derek and Clif.  Woah!

I don't want to risk spoiling this too much, but I don't think any of this synopsis will be surprising.  The movie was originally conceived as a real-world horror web series similar to EverymanHYBRID or MarbleHornets, except without Slenderman obviously.  With the feature film landing as legitimately found footage to fill in events that would be intentionally left out.  This idea was dropped, probably due to inexperience with the found-footage format and the effort it would take to manage the smoke screen.

The film is presented as the travelogue "Ends of the Earth" being filmed by lifelong friends Derek and Clif, who've decided to leave their mundane careers behind and travel around the world together.  Clif, being a filmmaker, has decided to produce a documentary/video blog site about their adventures.  Added poignancy is delivered by the reveal that prior to leaving, Derek was diagnosed with an AVM, a malformation of blood vessels that could cause a cerebral hemorrhage and kill him at any time.  Despite a strong possibility of death if ever further than 20 minutes away from a major hospital, Derek feels he has to go on this trip with his friend.  It's super bro-tastic.

Just a few days into the trip, while in Paris, Derek attempts to hook up with a French girl named Audrey and brings her back to the hotel he and Clif are staying in.  Some time later, Clif and two friend they were traveling with decide to attempt a "Turkish Cockblock" on Derek, only to discover he's passed out and bleeding from the eyebrow and arm.  Despite this, Derek insists on continuing the trip and he and Clif travel to Italy.  From there Derek begins exhibiting symptoms of a bizarre illness and then things go totally wayward and wrong, while Clif insists on filming all of it and posting to the blog.

Without going any further into detail I feel like the reveal of Derek's illness is handled really cleverly.  At under 85 minutes the whole movie is very tight with very little cruft, the whole thing is super streamlined.  I think as part of that it comes off as slightly utilitarian to the story; spending only as much time as it needs to establish each point, which I don't actually fault in a found footage movie.  A real person filming real events would not flounder around establishing "mood" or creating artistic and visually stunning atmospheric shots.  I think this was part of the reason Mr. Jones was held back in my eyes: that started from a found footage perspective then dropped it for dream logic while still maintaining that it was footage rather than dropping the pretense altogether.  Afflicted never falls into this and maintains not only its found footage style but also keeps the video blog site in the mix the whole time due to Clif's compulsive filming and hands-free camera rigs.  It's really one of the finest explanations for why all the footage exists that I've seen yet.

Also, the characters of Clif and Derek are wonderful and their friendship, though bro-tastic, is very deep and manages to drive the movie; resulting in a lot really effective and touching moments.  While no single scene is stand out, there is one that felt like it missed the mark a bit in tone.  The concept of it doesn't really bother me, just the way that it was handled felt like it was too "epic" for the rest of the movie which was really character driven. The scene in question is a confrontation between Derek and Audrey towards the end of the movie. See, Derek is a vampire and Audrey is his sire. Derek has been tracking her, convinced she somehow holds the truth to how to cure or kill himself. Turns out Audrey isn't too happy with being reintroduced and has an epic vampire fight with Derek involving a lot of environment destruction and epic wind-up punches. In fact, this fight is such a big deal it's the only time the camera is actually damaged. Even a drawn out battle with an entire SWAT team didn't put a single nick in the lens. But it just felt like too much of a stock action beat with major destruction rather than a realistic fight or even just a heated argument which could've sufficed.

As one final odd bit of continuity:  Derek, as a vampire, beats up and then bites Clif and drinks his blood. Despite not meaning to and also being totally in the thralls of feral vampire bloodlust where you'd think he'd drink as much blood as possible, this does not kill Clif. Though much of the film after this involves Derek's guilt over killing Clif, his friend actually comes back after his burial. However, lacking a friend in Derek and the subsequent pep talk by Audrey, Clif doesn't understand how to handle his vampirism and goes completely feral à la Daybreakers. This is only shown in a mid-credits scene. Given that Derek did not intend to create a vampire and also would've drank his fill rather than leaving some amount of blood behind, which is another common way of creating a vampire, how easy is it to accidentally create a vampire in this world? Derek has a confrontation with a French SWAT team where he kills several of them, many by bites. Did he just create a vampire SWAT team? What about Feral Clif? If Derek accidentally sired Clif while feral, how many of Clif's victims become vampires themselves. At the end, Derek becomes an avenger only drinking the blood of "evil" people who murder others or hurt the helpless...how many of those become vampires?

Afflicted is a good movie, no doubts.  It's pretty cheap on Amazon Instant streaming right now.  Worth the watch.

--PXA

October Horror 2012: V/H/S

V/H/S is a recently released found footage horror anthology with segments written and directed by: David Bruckner, Ti West, Glenn McQuaid, Joe Swanberg, the directing team Radio Silence. The framing story was written and directed by Adam Wingard.  Again, expect spoilers, but I'll try to spoiler tag the juiciest bits.


The framing story is titled "Tape 56" and centers around a group of professional hoodlums who tape themselves committing various crimes like destroying lights and windows at an empty building or tearing off a woman's shirt and filming her boobs.  I think one of them was also taping himself having sex with his girlfriend but the other activities are taped over it.  They get hired by an unknown person to break into an empty house and steal a specific VHS tape.  Each other story is a tape found in the collection at the house.

Amateur Night
This segment is about 3 guys who've purchased a set of eyeglass with a hidden camera in the frames with the intention of filming themselves having sex with women they bring to their hotel room from nearby clubs.  Most of the short is filled with the lead guy being an absolute jackass and all 3 of them getting really really drunk.  Eventually they get back to their room with 2 girls, one of which looks a little weird and only ever says "I like you" to the cameraman.  The lead guy tries stripping one of the girls, but she passes out and his friends convince him not to have sex with her while she's unconscious.  So he decides to have sex with the weird looking girl while she constantly reaches for the cameraman trying to involve him.  He's too wasted from all the drinking and drugs so he goes to the bathroom while the 3rd friend strips naked and tries to initiate the threesome.  While in the bathroom the girl goes crazy and starts ripping into the leader.  The cameraman and the naked 3rd wheel try to escape but she kills nudie during the chase.  The cameraman's hand is injured and the girl is revealed to be a succubus.  She still likes the cameraman and tries to seduce him, but he's too afraid to get it up.  In a rage, she sprouts wings and flies away with him.  This short was a bit weak, I thought, because the 3 guys were absolute assholes.  Unlikable in every way.

Second Honeymoon
The next short, directed by Ti West, is the only short that doesn't involve a supernatural element.  The segment follows a hipster couple as they travel out west for their honeymoon.  There's a forshadowing fortune telling scene and an implication of a creepy character being introduced off camera.  While the couple sleeps on their first night, an unknown person sneaks into the room and wanders around with the camera.  They pull the covers off the wife and stroke her skin with a switchblade, then empties the husband's wallet, drops his toothbrush in the toilet and leaves.  This builds a lot of mistrust as the husband accuses the wife of stealing the money.  They have some stilted moments and then enjoy some time at a canyon.  The person sneaks into the room again, this time stabbing the husband in the neck.  The film cuts shortly then returns to a short shot of the wife and an unknown woman making out in the mirror, before she asks the new girl if she erased the camera.  I like Ti West and this short is pretty tense and decent.  However, it really feels like nothing happened because of Ti's signature snail-like pacing.  He also didn't have enough time to give his characters the depth he normally does.  Good show, but it stumbles.

Tuesday the 17th
This obvious play on Friday the 13th was directed by Glenn McQuaid who also directed I Sell the Dead.  The story centers around a group of friends who travel to a cabin in the woods to do the typical things.  There are some nicely creepy flashes of mutilated bodies in the footage while they tour the woods.  Out of freaking nowhere the "nice girl" starts talking about horrible things that happened.  The typical initial kills, sex offers, reveal of understanding are kindof awkward because of the tight timeframe.  The killer is actually kindof cool, he's like the love-child of Jason and Slenderman.  A supernatural slasher who uses knives but can only be seen as heavy distortions on camera.  Despite the awkward bits, I enjoyed this part as well.

The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger
This story happens entirely in webcam chats between a girl who inexplicably flashes her boobs and her boyfriend who is away at medical school.  Emily is showing off her new apartment but is complaining about strange things that go bump in the night.  Despite not believing her, the boyfriend eventually sees odd things happen on her webcam behind her.  Eventually she comes up with a plan to use him to guide her through her apartment with her eyes closed so she can try to talk to the spirit-children we've been seeing without being scared.  A few moments later she does see the children, and they attack her knocking her unconscious.  The boyfriend miraculously enters the apartment just a few seconds later and flips Emily over while the ghost kids watch.  He makes an incision in her back and removes a small alien-looking fetus thing.  He asks the ghosts how many more of those he'll have to remove from her before they stop growing back, then punches her in the face and breaks her arm.  The camera cuts to them on webcam again with her arm in a cast, telling her boyfriend about how a doctor diagnosed her with mild schizophrenia which explained the children she saw and why she ran in front of a car without remembering.  They hang up the webcam and after a short moment we see another girl on webcam with the same boyfriend.  She also flashes her boobs inexplicably.  This is probably my favorite short of the movie.  It's a little mind-bending and the scares are delivered wonderfully.

10/31/98
The final short is 4 guys who go to a Halloween party at someone's house only to find it empty.  Undeterred they wander around the house in costume looking for people or beer.  There are a few brief flashes of some sort of ghostly figure, but nothing that the characters react to.  Eventually they make it to the attic where a few hicks are trying to either exorcise or assault a woman in a nightgown.  The friends flee and make it to the door before deciding they can't not doing anything and run upstairs to save the girl.  During this bit all sorts of crazy things manifest in the house: stacked chairs, crows, projectile vases, etc.  The group makes it out with the girl and into car.  They drive away and make it a decent distance before a strange fog envelopes the car.  The girl vanishes and appears outside of the car.  The poor bros have rescued a demon or demon-possessed girl.  This short is bananas, but really fun to watch.

We now return to the framing story, which has randomly flashed in between the shorts.  During the story a supposedly deceased man in a chair had vanished from the chair.  He's undead or something and has been picking off the other criminals, and finally chases down the leader of the group.

This is a really good movie.  Some of the shorts are a little awkward, but the concept is decent and there are some standouts in Second Honeymoon, Sick Emily Thing etc, and 10/31/98.

More anthologies coming up: Trick 'R Treat

October Horror 2011: Day 21 - Paranormal Activity 3

I've learned 2 things today: Paranormal Activity 3 is a really scary movie and I'm one of the 5 people under age 35 that are capable of not talking for an hour and a half.

One of the unfortunate perils of seeing movies in theaters is the possibility that the audience is filled with disrespectful, juvenile, bros in flat-brimmed baseball caps and simpering, self-entitled college girls who really believe the entire audience should be made aware of their every thought and fear during the runtime of the film.  I am not kidding when I say one asshole brought a bulb-style bike horn to the theater, and squeaked it during the movie.  (P.S. if you are one of those people, you need to end yourself immediately.  A movie ticket costs at least $9, that is way too expensive to be forced to listen to you trying to pretend we're all here for your stand up hour.  Nobody needs your commentary, keep it to your damned self.)

That said, I think it's even more impressive that Paranormal Activity 3 is one of the most skin-crawling, gut-wrenchingly scary movies I have seen all year.  Despite the best efforts of the Mask of the Brotasm I was able to get involved enough in this movie to be concerned that I had just eaten and neglected to bring a change of pants.



Paranormal Activity 3 is a distant prequel to the events of Paranormal Activities 1 and 2, taking place in 1988.  It chronicles the initial haunting of Katie and her sister Kristi by the demon that would later torment them in adulthood.  PA3 has one of the more believable reasons for a found footage movie to have cameras everywhere:  Katie and Kristi live with their mother, Julie, and her boyfriend, Dennis.  Dennis is a professional cameraman.  He makes his living by video taping other people's important events.  This is why he has a garage full of cameras, VHS tapes, and editing equipment.  It's far more plausible than PA2's nanny/security cameras.

PA3 also has the good sense to drop the number of cameras used from the absurd total PA2 had.  For a large portion of the movie PA3 only uses 2 cameras.  They eventually add a 3rd camera, which has been attached to an oscillating fan, in order to catch more action.  This camera in particular had amazing potential for scary shots because it was in a regular motion.  They could easily add or remove elements from the scene when the camera wasn't showing them and also set off jump scares just barely out of frame.  The fact that you never really know what was going to show up as the camera was oscillating really contributed to the amount of tension those scenes had.

They also introduce a "witchcraft" aspect to the movie as a means of explanation of the presence of the demon, but they barely spend any time on it.  It results in providing some context to things, without explaining them too much.

They expertly build and release tension and exploit that to make great scares, and not just jump scares.  The scares here are far more shocking than the original movie, but rely more on tension than what the second movie did.

I think I might like it better than the original, but I might need to sit on that statement for a few weeks, maybe rewatch them both when they do a DVD release.  It's a very good movie and well worth ponying up the cash to the theater to see.

Tomorrow we begin the trip around the world, starting with David Cronenburg's The Brood, in North America.

October Horror 2011: Day 20 - Evil Things

Evil Things is a 2009 indie horror movie by Dominic Perez.

Following the disappearance of 5 pretty white folks a VHS tape is delivered anonymously to the FBI.  The tape is labeled with a handwritten note that just says "Evil Things".  On the tape is a pre-edited copy of THIS MOVIE.  OMGZ!

Most of the film is shot by one of the 5 lead characters, who is a film school student with aspirations of being a documentary film maker.  He's chronicling his friend's 21st birthday party, which takes place at an absolutely sweet house in the middle of the woods owned by the friend's Aunt.  The movie starts off in NYC at the beginning of the drive to the house and follows them as they're harassed by an unknown stalker in a van.  After a snow storm they end up at the house and spend the night drinking and partying, then the next day they spend several hours lost in the woods.  That night, they're picked off one by one, off camera.  The film ends with an over the shoulder shot of the killer editing the video and making a really creepy animal noise, which was heard earlier in the woods.  Then the film re-ends showing the killer video taping the cast hours before their road trip started.  Then shows more of the events of the movie from the killer's perspective during the credits.

The movie as a whole is pretty lackluster.  The scares are competently executed but not well supported by the surrounding scenes.  Also after a slower start the action takes off so quickly it glosses over what happens to a lot of the characters, which makes their ends lose some of their impact.  The complete lack of explanation of anything is also a little annoying.  Even after watching the credits you're left with no real idea of why the killer is doing anything.  For all we know, he really likes video cameras and kills anyone with one so he can liberate it.  The clicking animal noise, while supremely creepy, is given no context...the killer just makes that noise.  It's weird.  I'm not sure if the director was trying to be artsy or avant-garde by starting so many threads and ideas and never really tying any of them up, but it just rubbed me the wrong way.  Sometimes this can be really good, like in Inception where the movie ending is designed to be ambiguous with regards to the single question of "Is Cobb still dreaming?".  However, this works because Nolan expertly crafted the narrative around the question and chose that single question to leave open.  Perez's ending lacks any of this focus.

Unfortunately this is probably a little too confused to be really worth watching, unless you wanted to try to decipher whatever mythos might exist.

Found footage week closes with: Paranormal Activity 3.

October Horror 2011: Day 19 - Troll Hunter

Troll Hunter is a 2010 Norwegian movie released stateside in June 2011.

The found footage in this case comes from hard drives containing digital video shot by a group of film students who start the movie pursuing an alleged bear poacher.  They overstep just far enough to get involved with the poacher, who turns out to be Hans: Norway's only registered Troll Hunter.  Hans' job is to exterminate trolls who go outside of their territorial boundaries, or venture to a place where humans might discover them.  They begin following Hans as he tries to discover why so many trolls have fled their designated areas.

Ultra violet light causes trolls to violently explode or calcify depending on their age, and they have an insatiable craving for the blood of a Christian man.

There's nothing exceptional about the found footage camera work or premise.  In fact the camera gets annoying sometimes taping things that it doesn't seem like a rational person would tape.

However, the special effects were pretty nice.  They played off the uncanny valley-ness of modern CGI by designing trolls that looked a bit silly on purpose.  But the way they moved and the proportion and placement in the scene made them seem real, but still wrong somehow.  The effect of which is that you feel they really don't belong in the scene but it could just be because you're looking at a TROLL and it just doesn't make sense to your brain.

The story was compelling, if a bit simple, and the troll scenes were very tense.  The final boss was epic in the truest sense of the word.  The relative difference in size between the troll and the battle tankified jeep was mind boggling.  The ending of the found footage was a bit weak, but the post-epilogue bit of the state official was actually pretty fun.

Definitely worth watching for action, thrills, it's a little scary but more in the dark fantasy way than the horror way.  Good stuff, those Norwegian movies.

Next up: Evil Things

October Horror 2011: Day 18 - Apollo 18

Apollo 18's premise is that it's pieced together from recently recovered footage taken by the crew of the Apollo 18 mission.  The last official manned moon landing was the Apollo 17 mission, and 18 was cancelled.

The story begins with the mission being uncancelled and the 3-man crew informed they'll be allowed to go to the moon.  Once they arrive they experience technical difficulties, odd sensations, and eventually discover the remains of a secret, failed Russian mission and a dead cosmonaut.  They float an implication that the creepy problems and paranoia might be a result of a haunting by the dead cosmonaut and not the obvious creepy, stealthy alien.  But it never really pans out.

I think this uses the most plausible explanation for the constant presence of camera of any found footage horror movie I have ever seen.  Even the standard "Film crew" framing device inevitably leads to at least one moment where you think to yourself "Why the hell are they filming THAT?".  Either it's wildly inappropriate, or absurdly dull.  Another common trope in found footage is the camera operator will inexplicably manage to hold the camera amazingly steady while fleeing for their lives.  I really appreciated that in Apollo 18 a lot of the cameras were stationary or mounted to something.  Either a helmet, a vehicle.  Basically anything other than an astronaut having to hold a camera.  It makes an amazing amount of logical sense and allows the director to shoot from several angles and have the camera flail wildly when handheld in a stressful situation without losing the audience.

The movie is really good at being generally tense, and the final few scenes are very hectic and had you really sucked in and focused.  However, it's not scary, it's just tense.  When the movie and ends and tension releases you find yourself really disappointed, since nothing really happens.  There are really only 2 creepy things that happen, and the rest of the movie is tension between the characters.  There's nothing wrong with that sort of tension but the problem here is that it never leads anywhere.  You never discover anything about the presence/haunting on the moon, the crew all dies and...that's that.  The end.

Even with that, I enjoyed watching it because it is good, and even creepy.  It's just a bit of a let down because none of it leads anywhere.

Tomorrow night is the Norwegian import: Troll Hunter.

October Horror 2011: Day 17 - Cannibal Holocaust

Cannibal Holocaust is a 1980 Italian movie directed by Ruggero Deodato.  It is considered the grand-daddy of the found footage genre and one of the most disgusting and controversial movies of all time.  After the movie's original release, the film was seized until the director could prove to a court of law that he didn't kill his cast.

The first half of this movie focuses on anthropologist Harold Monroe leading an expedition into the South American jungle to rescue a lost group of an American documentary film crew.  They really drive home the point in the intro that the film crew is American.  The second half is Monroe watching the footage of the original crew that he recovered and discovering why the original crew was brutally murdered and displayed like a grotesque christmas ornament.

The movie is famous for its anti-exploitation message and contains a form of the iconic "Who is the real monster?" line.

This movie is sick.  It is gross.  It is disgusting.  It would be difficult to watch if I hadn't had my soul removed from years of internet shock memes.  The effects are quite good when they're used correctly, but often look like bad paper maché.  What helps the gore effects out is the use of actual gore.  One of the controversies of this movie is that the animals that were killed by the cast during the found footage portion are really being killed on film.  It's so undeniably real that it lends credence to the effects used to simulate the human murder and dismemberment.  Unfortunately, these scenes are actual slaughter.  It's disgusting and it makes me hate the characters.

...Crap, I'm supposed to hate the characters.  The original film crew are raging assholes, we're supposed to hate them and be satisfied by their eventual death and dismemberment.  It works.  Between the senseless animal murder, the sadistic treatment of the natives, and the rape I honestly felt the characters deserved to die.

Cannibal Holocaust isn't what I'd call a good movie.  It's disgusting and morally reprehensible, and the characters deserve their gruesome deaths.  Really the only thing that makes this worth watching is the horror cred you get from having watched Cannibal Holocaust

Move along.

Tomorrow night, found footage continues with Apollo 18.

October Horror 2011: Day 16 - The Blair Witch Project

The second entry in Found Footage week is 1999's smash hit The Blair Witch project.  Found footage movies had been in the periphery of the genre for years, perhaps one of the earliest examples was 1980's Cannibal Holocaust.  However, Blair Witch managed to bring it into the mainstream of the horror genre through an innovative internet marketing campaign which attempted to provide validity to the assertion that the recovered film was legitimate.  Even though the Blair Witch franchise attempt failed utterly with the sublimely terrible Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows, the success of The Blair Witch Project enabled later films like Cloverfield, Quarantine, Paranormal Activity, and Grave Encounters.

Blair Witch has quite a reputation surrounding it, unfortunately I just don't think it's deserved.  For something that's supposed to be real footage some of the actions of the characters seem utterly contrived and I just can't imagine a real person doing something like that.

The majority of the film's running time is spent trekking through the woods and arguing with each other, which grated on my nerves so much that by the time actually scary things started happening I just didn't care.  Further, the build up to the climax is scarier than the actual close.  The tent shaking scene in particular is pretty tense.

They open a lot of things that they never really answer, but I suppose that was create an air of mystery...but that sort of thing is silly in the movie itself.  You've already convinced people to watch it, just resolve things for them.  The unknown fate of one of the characters may have been alluding to a continuation of the story in the sequel, but then they made a sequel that didn't pick up that plot thread at all.

If the movie had a stronger ending I might accept its flaws, but the end is just such a let down it seems more silly than scary.  Maybe if I didn't have such a strong disbelief from so many years on the internet, or if I'd had the immersion of a theater, I would think better of the ending.

Anyway, next up is the original found footage: Cannibal Holocaust.

October Horror 2011: Day 15 - [REC] (2007)

I'm not entirely sure that this should be here, as this is the original movie that was later remade.  However, we'd watched the remake, Quarantine, a few years back when Blockbuster was still in business and this seemed like a good opportunity to watch the original movie.

[REC] is a 2007 Spanish film which was remade barely 1 year later as the English language Quarantine.  It was written and directed by John Erik Dowdle, who was responsible for the cult found footage movie The Poughkeepsie Tapes.  GIFs from that have been making their way around the internet as some of the most damned creepy scenes ever.

The premise of both movies is that a news channel reporter is shadowing the local fire department as a human interest story for a late-night news show when they receive a call to rescue an elderly woman trapped inside her apartment.  When they arrive, the woman is covered in blood and very aggressive.  She ends up biting one of the responders.  When they attempt to evacuate the responder to the hospital they discover the police and the army have surrounded the building in a quarantine as part of Biological, Chemical, or Nuclear response.  The rest of the movie follows the group of tenants as their group slowly fractures and becomes infected with something very similar to a Zombie virus (à la 28 Days Later) until the only survivors are the newscaster and her cameraman who take refuge in the attic apartment where they discover the source of the disease before being murdered by patient 0.

People criticize the remake quite a bit for being mostly a shot-for-shot remake of the original with very little original spin.  After watching both movies, that complaint seems to come mostly from hipsters who believe foreign movies are better by virtue of being foreign movies, who believe English language remakes of foreign movies are always bad because we Americans have no sense of what makes a scary movie and bulldoze over the subtlety and superior sense of horror that foreign movies innately posses.

[REC] by itself is a great movie, it's claustrophobic, shocking, and creepy.  It's bloody, and violent without becoming an action movie.  The film is a testament to the found footage genre.  It's terrifying without doing much over most of its running time and despite a minor stumble during the last 10 minutes has what might be one of the most terrifying final 5 minutes of any movie. EVER.  I am not kidding, the end of this movie was beyond scary.  I will admit that it was harder to get into because it relies extensively on very fast paced storytelling, which is difficult when reading subtitles.  I have no particular hatred of subtitles, but they do make things a little harder to follow.  Especially in something that moves this quickly.  Even with that against it, it's a truly great movie in its own right. 

The remake acknowledges this by being 90% the same. However, the remake is shot with a better sense of composition and pacing.  They've created a few new scenes that didn't exist in the original movie that serve very well to heighten or maintain the tension established in previous shots.  One of these new scenes is the reason it took me 3 tries to finish the movie for the first time.  It's truly something I didn't want to watch.  Some of the more subtle effects were used to extend the capabilities of the zombies so that their movements threw them into a very uncomfortable part of the uncanny valley. Also, an issue I had with [REC] was that it looked like the majority of it took place during the day and was very well lit from outside the building. This didn't make sense for something set during the overnight shift of a fire department. Quarantine had much better lighting.

The running time of the remake is ~89 minutes and the running time or the original is ~78 minutes.

I was more affected and more frightened by the first 82 minutes of the remake, but the final 7 or so minutes are far more scary than the remake's finale.  The original takes a minor tangent into religious explanation for the events before abandoning it right before the end.  After this weird religion thing it becomes far creepier than the remake.

Either way, this original is great and the remake is really a remake done right where the original is adapted and expanded on to make it better for the target audience.

Tomorrow night we check out the movie that kicked off modern found footage revival: The Blair Witch Project.