Let’s admit that Area 51 is a place that has gotten a lot of movies made about it, despite the fact that it doesn’t exists. There, I said it. Suck it conspiracy theorists. It doesn’t exist. Deal with it. So I have to admit, I wasn’t exactly intrigued by the premise, but I gave it a shot anyway.
If only I had a time machine. Not so I could stop myself from seeing this movie, but so I could go back in time and stop Oren Peli from ever being born. That way, he would have never made Paranormal Activity, it would have never become a hit and he would have never been able to beat the premise to death.
But I don’t have a time machine so I did in fact, watch this shameless rehash.
The premise is this. Reid Warner is desperate to discover the secrets of Area 51. Because he’s apparently unaware that the internet exists and is unable to Google them, he heads on out to the Nevada desert. Of course, he gets some buddies to come along. We have Ben Rovner and Darrin Bragg, along with a completely unnecessary female character Jelena Nik, whose dad just happened to be a rogue scientist for Area 51. So off they go, into the desert, armed with nothing more than a bunch of night vision capable cameras.
Well, actually, they make a stop at Hooters first. Nope, not making this up. They stop there to test out their equipment and share all their innermost feelings with the cameras for absolutely no reason at all.
Then they go out to the desert and you eagerly await their preferably extremely violent deaths. Well, I imagine they were violent. I don’t really know, because this is all filmed in crappy found footage…in the dark.
It was like being forced to watch a marathon edition of Ghost Hunters. I hate Ghost Hunters. It’s one of the few times I actually want the ghosts to win.
Can I entirely blame Peli for trying to replicate his success with Paranormal Activity? Not entirely. His problem was that this sat on the shelf for five years. During that time, found footage was done to death, revived and done to death again. It’s just not scary anymore.
Found Footage is not a real filmmaking technique. It’s a fad and a silly one at that. It is the slap bracelet of the film world. It was good at first, but then it started to wear away and now all it does is cut your wrists…or make you want to.
This is a phoned in effort with terrible acting, scripting and storytelling. The majority of it is watching the guys try to get to Area 51. When they do, you’re plunged into darkness, watching them occasionally bump into things while allegedly scary things happen.
You don’t need to leave the house to watch this heaping pile. The filmmakers wisely decided to release it on Amazon Instant Video, probably hoping that people will accidentally purchase it. Because I have to say, I do not understand why anyone would watch this on purpose.
We Gave it: 1 Star: Official Movie Trailer and Movie Poster Below
