By Geno McGahee
In 1999, THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT took the world by storm and re-introduced the “found footage” style of horror filmmaking. Since then, the found footage has been a constant and has actually been seen in many to most of the independent horror entries. Justin Synder has obviously been influenced by THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT with his first feature “BLACK EYED CHILDREN: LET ME IN,” which will be distributed by Gravitas Ventures via VOD on Google Play, iTunes, Vudu, AT&T U-verse and Amazon Instant on September 1st.
We begin with the Filmmaker (Snyder) interviewing a bunch of townies about the legend of the black eyed children. Everyone has heard of the legend or has known somebody who knew somebody who encountered these beings. This is where this film begins to have some trouble. The acting is very wooden and clunky, for the most part. It’s very difficult to connect with the townies because the acting is so bad.
As the film progresses, we get some history on the phenomena and more interviews are conducted, and we run into another problem. There are some characters that are too silly. They are either dressed funny or wearing odd glasses and used strange voices. The focus was not solely on making a horror movie it seems or there wasn’t enough control. This happens a lot with a filmmaker’s first film. Believe me, I know.
The Filmmaker spends some time in the woods in a tent and he encounters some very Blair Witch-type experiences. At one point, he sees one of the black-eyed people that elect to take off the minute that the Filmmaker asks some questions. The Filmmaker becomes rather convinced that something is going on that supports the legend of these things, and we get some verification when we get some cool attack scenes with the black-eyed children. This is where the potential was. The visuals were very creepy.
A shock ending and it’s done. This Mocumentary/Found Footage film struggles but on budget of $1000 and considering it was Snyder’s first film, it’s bound to have limitations and problems. The acting and apparent ad-libbing makes it difficult to get into. I give Justin Snyder great credit for putting this together and making a feature film and also getting it out there, but there still a lot of growing to do. I would like to see him work with better actors and exert a little more structure to the cast. It just seems that he let them run free a little too much.
If you are a fan of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and the found footage sub-genre, you will probably appreciate BLACK EYED CHILDREN: LET ME IN. It has some cool visuals and back story. It just needed some more focus and direction.
Rating: 5/10
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