Very well executed

Truly Dreadful Film

Let's be realistic.

In other words,this film is a surreal ride.

It seems like a couple of nice Catholic guys with potty mouths who love cheap beer made this film...not that those are bad things, I'm just saying. The haunting of the farm didn't come across as a real haunting as much as it was pranksters. There was zero special effects. At no time did I feel any excitement or being entertained. Camera being jerked around and I failed to see the significance of 11:55 or the deceased parents. No connections were made to anything other than this being a hoax concocted by Roman. They advertise "With real locations, real people, and real relationships, this is the realest found footage film you will ever experience." Yes it was as real as my life. Unfortunately my life is boring too.

I guess I'll continue to remain a fan of the found footage genre no matter how many bad films I watch. THE ROHL FARMS HAUNTING is certainly a poor addition to the genre that very few people are going to get a kick out of it, aside from perhaps the people who made it. This is a cheapie independent production that suffers from an almost entire lack of script, which means all of the dialogue is ad-libbed by the guys who star in it.What this means is that 99% of the running time consists of a couple of guys wandering around empty farm buildings at night, trying to convince the viewer that some kind of evil spirit is lurking on the premises. Sadly the actors aren't very good and seem devoid of imagination when delivering their dialogue, which is stilted and repetitive. The cameraman in particular seems to whine and complain a lot which doesn't make for a very engaging viewing experience.In terms of the horror stuff, very little happens, aside from a few spooky moments captured in the background of shots. That granddaddy of the genre, BBC's GHOSTWATCH, runs rings around this production. I admit that the isolated setting is an effective one and with the right material this could have been an extra-creepy viewing experience, but sadly there's too little meat to the story for this to work.

I love found footage films, I find them quite terrifying when done properly. They're claustrophobic and creepy, you never know what will be standing there when you turn the camera round. I thought this film started off very well, quite tense early on, with the stress levels gradually rising at a nice pace. Luke was likable, just a working class bloke trying to keep his parent's farm going. He was very natural in front of the camera, and believable. Cordero started off OK, although if someone was shoving a camera in my face all the time it'd get on my wick fast. As the film wore on, the word "haunting" in the title is misleading as it's not ghosts at all. The three masked figures are nice and creepy from a distance, but look silly up close. Cordero started to really grate on my last nerve, he was whining constantly in a really droning, nasally voice, and he didn't. shut. up. EVER. I had to mute my TV now and then because I couldn't stand it. And considering how great he thought he was at film making, he was waving the camera around like no tomorrow. His car went missing and he felt the need to sweep the ground with the camera fifteen times, just to emphasise that the car was gone. It made me feel seasick. Some of the stupid things both men did bugged me a bit. If your shotgun goes missing in the middle of a home invasion, surely there must be a knife or other weapon around somewhere? Neither of them felt the need to arm themselves? Luke was a big chap, but against three people? Anyway, I did enjoy this in the sense that it jangled my nerves, but there were so many things that annoyed me, so I haven't rated it very highly. Nothing was explained at all, which isn't always a bad thing, but I hope there won't be a sequel. I definitely wouldn't watch it if there is.

We watch a lot of horror/scary movies, both good and bad, unfortunately this didn't fall into the good category. Hand held camera, found footage has been done a lot in movies, especially when the budget is limited, I normally don't mind them as long as there is a good plot and a character to root for, I just didn't find that here. I may have missed something but the movie is about a documentary maker but by the end of the movie I still wasn't sure what the documentary was about, I'm guessing the documentary makers farmer friend who lost both his parents (how did they die? We are just the viewer why would we want to know that). The characters throughout the movie make poor decisions, for example, let's leave the door unlocked and windows open and let's leave our only gun by the unlocked front door and expect it to still be there later (spoiler alert: it wasn't). My favourites, let's run off into the darkness outside separately and let's not bother picking up anything to defend ourselves with from the strange people who are trying to scare us. My biggest annoyance was why are the characters in the masks doing any of it, the movie had no revelation at the end or story unravelling and each time you think something good or interesting is about to happen it just doesn't. The only positive was that the people in masks were a bit creepy, is that enough?