The artificially high star rating here can only be from family or friends of people who worked on this movie. Unfortunately, this film is as shoddy as the other written reviews here attest.
The acting comes off flat (even when they're pretending to be frightened), but I'm not going to blame the actors for this-- that has to be the writers and director. The actors are given limited and cliché lines in the first place and then the shots are cut with unnaturally long pauses in between each actor's delivery, so that nothing flows.
The overall 'cinematography' and disjointed story flow reminded me of one thing, but that one thing *exactly*: watching someone play a standard online PC game in POV. Right down to watching our character's POV as she hears someone scream, at length, in the next room over, and hmm-- Where is our character looking while this is happening? Top right corner of her room. Then top left corner. Then oh, look at the wardrobe for a while. Then at the wall. Back to the top right corner. Random, unnatural head swivels; just calmly gazing around in odd directions, bored and biding time until she feels like moving to the next step of this video game (though the voice-over is trying to convey panicked breath and confusedly calling out for the person who is screaming). Timing doesn't matter in this movie. Does she need to rush into the other room to see what's wrong? Nope, no rush! She can just wander around the rest of the facility wherever she wants (maybe smash a few pots Link-style), chat with another character, and when she eventually gets to the room-of-screams, that character will act like there was no delay on her part.
At literally no point did this movie create tension for me. Like another reviewer said, the thin plot was dragged along so long I was HOPING for our protagonists to die so the movie could end. There are a few standard jump scares, which the movie broadcasts for you a good 20 seconds in advance so by the time you get there you're immune to any startle, and are just tapping your foot impatiently wondering when they'll get on with it.
SPOILER: I couldn't help but laugh out loud when the man was lying on the ground, screaming as if in pain, when we could visibly see that the children were doing nothing but lightly patting him with their hands. It was like watching a man pretend to be killed by a pile of curious puppies who were barely touching him. /SPOILER
Zero character development or emotional connection between audience and character. There's just nothing 'there', below the surface, of any character in the movie. They're nothing but moving mouths and hands for the words and actions they're given, and those words are *very* limited and uninspired, and the actions are *very* basic and often unnatural. There's just nothing and no one to connect to in this movie.
I'll give them that the ending wasn't *totally* predictable, but it also isn't as neat as I think it thinks it is. I can certainly imagine a few scenarios that make sense of it, but it's left unexplained within the movie.
There is too much wrong with every scene to give a blow-by-blow. Just... don't waste your time. At least, not based on the artificially high star rating on this site. Read the reviews first.
PS: One personal gripe. There's a frustrating old toad of a scene in here (minor spoiler ahead) that is such an overdone cliché and seems to suggest that people who live in movie universes consider normal what most of us would consider brain damage. That is, when our protagonist tries to tell her coworker that she's seen specific, disturbing things (including a written message on a bathroom door), her coworker *immediately* jumps to the "Oh, you're in a new environment; it's perfectly normal for you to be having incredibly specific audio-visual hallucinations" write-off. ...WHAT? In what universe do dialogue writers live, that they think humans dismiss each other like this? These characters, in-universe, are wearing glasses that create visual projections, but the character doesn't even jump to *that* as an explanation (suggesting some kind of glitch, etc). She just goes straight to the old "You just have nerves, being in a new place and all" chestnut, as if that would ever be a plausible reason for someone to visually hallucinate a message on a bathroom door. If you think your coworker is hallucinating messages on bathroom doors, that's not a moment to celebrate that that's *all* it is-- that's a moment to help her seek medical help! But writers keep using this as if it's a reasonable human interaction, which it isn't, and it's aggravating.
The acting comes off flat (even when they're pretending to be frightened), but I'm not going to blame the actors for this-- that has to be the writers and director. The actors are given limited and cliché lines in the first place and then the shots are cut with unnaturally long pauses in between each actor's delivery, so that nothing flows.
The overall 'cinematography' and disjointed story flow reminded me of one thing, but that one thing *exactly*: watching someone play a standard online PC game in POV. Right down to watching our character's POV as she hears someone scream, at length, in the next room over, and hmm-- Where is our character looking while this is happening? Top right corner of her room. Then top left corner. Then oh, look at the wardrobe for a while. Then at the wall. Back to the top right corner. Random, unnatural head swivels; just calmly gazing around in odd directions, bored and biding time until she feels like moving to the next step of this video game (though the voice-over is trying to convey panicked breath and confusedly calling out for the person who is screaming). Timing doesn't matter in this movie. Does she need to rush into the other room to see what's wrong? Nope, no rush! She can just wander around the rest of the facility wherever she wants (maybe smash a few pots Link-style), chat with another character, and when she eventually gets to the room-of-screams, that character will act like there was no delay on her part.
At literally no point did this movie create tension for me. Like another reviewer said, the thin plot was dragged along so long I was HOPING for our protagonists to die so the movie could end. There are a few standard jump scares, which the movie broadcasts for you a good 20 seconds in advance so by the time you get there you're immune to any startle, and are just tapping your foot impatiently wondering when they'll get on with it.
SPOILER: I couldn't help but laugh out loud when the man was lying on the ground, screaming as if in pain, when we could visibly see that the children were doing nothing but lightly patting him with their hands. It was like watching a man pretend to be killed by a pile of curious puppies who were barely touching him. /SPOILER
Zero character development or emotional connection between audience and character. There's just nothing 'there', below the surface, of any character in the movie. They're nothing but moving mouths and hands for the words and actions they're given, and those words are *very* limited and uninspired, and the actions are *very* basic and often unnatural. There's just nothing and no one to connect to in this movie.
I'll give them that the ending wasn't *totally* predictable, but it also isn't as neat as I think it thinks it is. I can certainly imagine a few scenarios that make sense of it, but it's left unexplained within the movie.
There is too much wrong with every scene to give a blow-by-blow. Just... don't waste your time. At least, not based on the artificially high star rating on this site. Read the reviews first.
PS: One personal gripe. There's a frustrating old toad of a scene in here (minor spoiler ahead) that is such an overdone cliché and seems to suggest that people who live in movie universes consider normal what most of us would consider brain damage. That is, when our protagonist tries to tell her coworker that she's seen specific, disturbing things (including a written message on a bathroom door), her coworker *immediately* jumps to the "Oh, you're in a new environment; it's perfectly normal for you to be having incredibly specific audio-visual hallucinations" write-off. ...WHAT? In what universe do dialogue writers live, that they think humans dismiss each other like this? These characters, in-universe, are wearing glasses that create visual projections, but the character doesn't even jump to *that* as an explanation (suggesting some kind of glitch, etc). She just goes straight to the old "You just have nerves, being in a new place and all" chestnut, as if that would ever be a plausible reason for someone to visually hallucinate a message on a bathroom door. If you think your coworker is hallucinating messages on bathroom doors, that's not a moment to celebrate that that's *all* it is-- that's a moment to help her seek medical help! But writers keep using this as if it's a reasonable human interaction, which it isn't, and it's aggravating.