Pluskylang Great Film overall

Reptileenbu Did you people see the same film I saw?

TaryBiggBall It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Tymon Sutton The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

derekjager As everyone else has mentioned, this has way too many 80s TV commercials.This film is about an hour and 20 mins in length. It's ALL simply watching a VHS tape from the 80s. In fact, the first 20 mins--TWENTY MINUTES!--is nothing but two newscasters chatting and stories of local news. And dozens of TV commercials.20 minutes of that. Yes, it's all done very well, but to what end? We get it after five minutes. We want story, a compelling reason to keep watching.Finally, 20 minutes into the film we get the film proper, the investigation into the haunted house. Nothing really happens...and every time something starts to happen, they cut to a commercial. Seriously. The "joke" we got an hour ago is STILL being told! Check the credits and there are about a dozen directors and writers. So they all just did a bunch of commercials, thought it was hysterical, kept them ALL in the film, and hope we'll watch. I did, you don't have to.

TheRedDeath30 I think I can count on one hand the movies that I have given a one star rating to on this site, but if I could go lower for this pile of tripe, I would. Who in their right mind is giving this 9 stars in their reviews? Are you serious? I know that we all have our personal tastes, but ratings like that are the reason no one takes this site seriously. Are you trying to tell me this movie is in the top tier of horror movies ever released? Really?This is marketed well. The movie creators wanted it to feel like an actual news broadcast gone wrong, caught on some lost and obscure VHS tape and found for our startling shock years later. On paper, it's a fantastic idea and the movie tries hard to recreate that feel, but goes waaaaaaay too far trying to accomplish it.We start out with a half hour news broadcast. I'm not joking, either. You literally watch a half hour news broadcast, complete with bad anchors making corny jokes. Naturally, being Halloween night, most of the stories revolve around the holiday, but it starts losing the audience right away.Eventually, we get to a special investigation with a reporter visiting a haunted house, accompanied by a priest and a couple of paranormal investigators. Things go awry as the evening wears on and leaves the viewer wondering if the terror is real or supernatural.Let's get one thing out of the way. This is ultra low budget, featuring actors you'll never see again, virtually non-existent effects and horrible dialog. No part of my bashing of this movie has anything to do with those limitations. I love indie horror. I support indie horror. I accept and, almost, embrace these things about indie horror. That's not my problem with the movie.First, let's rant about the news broadcast again. It's almost a full third of the movie. So, before we get to any plot that is essential for further into the movie, the audience is already getting bored with the tedious ploy of this fake news cast. Yes, I'll spoil things by saying that part of this news has a bearing on events to come, but half an hour is just not necessary.What's with the fast forwarding? You just ruined the idea, idiots. Is that supposed to be clever? I need another way to bash me over the head with the fact that it's a VHS tape? If you are going for an immersive experience where a viewer might, conceivably, believe they were watching a real broadcast, why fast forward parts? It takes you out of the "experience" and reminds you that it's a joke.The actual "horror" is non-existent. By the time the movie gets done making corny jokes, we realize that almost nothing has actually happened. We are, then, asked to believe that these characters feel some terror, though nothing has really elicited that reaction, then a "wham bam" ending and it's done. They could have used this format to build real tension and create a real audience nightmare if we "thought" real terror was happening to real people on a real video, but they never even try.Now, let's get to the ultimate sin, the freaking commercials!!!! Since this is a "real broadcast" we have commercials. At first, they are amusing attempts at recreating lost era local TV commercials, but they just keep popping up over and over and over and over. There are as many commercials in the 90 minute movie as you would expect to get in a real 90 minute TV broadcast. The problem is that I watched a movie so I didn't have to deal with freaking commercials. By the end, it was everything I could do not to just stop the movie and give up. I wanted to grab whoever made this decision by the throat and throttle them.If they were silly, SNL style goofs, I could tolerate some of them. If there were more hayride, monster makeup, trick or treat feeling commercials, I would have taken more. Half these commercials are bad political commercials, or fake insurance ads, etc, that offer no humor and nothing more than 30 boring seconds of monotony. The whole gimmick might have worked if there was a commercial here or there, but I would honestly guess that a third of this run time is fake commercials. In college, I roomed with film students. Most made movies as good or better than this, albeit without the horrible commercials. This is not good. It's almost painful to watch. My wife exclaimed "Thank god that's over" when we finally got to the end. I couldn't have put it better myself.

ecmelton-186-105049 The WNUF Halloween Special has one of the coolest concept I've seen in a long time. In the late '80s a live news broadcast holds a séance in an abandoned house where several murders had occurred years earlier.....and then terrible horror movie thing start to happen. The cool part is that this story is presented as though a person had taped it when it aired live, and someone found it years later. The movie's creator actually put a few copies in thrift shops hoping someone would buy it and spread the word about a creepy VHS tape they found, unfortunately, none have turned up yet. Anyone that ever bought old second hand tapes of random movies or watched TV that had been recorded on a VHS and liked seeing the old commercials and TV bumpers would likely find something to enjoy in this film.This unique presentation is one of the films main selling points. It does a great job replicating an actual local news station from the 1980s. It has the correct kind of tape damage and decay you would expect and even has some really funny (and incredibly stupid) commercials for fictional local businesses. A lot of the time period pieces overdo the clothes and pop culture references to showcase the decade it takes place in, but the WNUF Halloween Special is surprisingly restrained and realistic with it's style.It's a little difficult to gage how good the acting actually is because most of the characters are news presenters using their overly chipper television personas, which are intentionally awkward and bad, but the moments where something happens and they do break character are well acted. It comes across as genuine concern and shock. The only other characters are paranormal investigators who are also putting on a show for the cameras and some locals being interviewed who are acting stupid for the cameras. There's also a dentist who hates candy and shows up several times. It's all pretty believable, and there's nothing that would take you out of the movie. People shouldn't be mistaken in thinking this a straight forward horror movie. It's definitely a horror comedy that pokes fun at bad local TV and knows how silly it is at times, but it doesn't shy away from some darker moments too. Overall it's a really great watch and a fun movie for horror fans. A lot of films are doing similar things with found footage and what-not, but this film does a fantastic job using the format and goes all out to create a believable story. This would be the perfect movie to get and have some friends come over and watch it under the pretense that it's a real taped special you found at a yard- sale or something, so you can freak them out. I really encourage that you seek it out.

TheFilmGuy1 This is a film that in theory sounds really cool, and is actually executed in a well done way, but just doesn't work. It's the kind of thing that would work as a creepy pasta you would read online, but it doesn't have enough entertainment to be a movie. The biggest issue here is just how much horror we get. The movie is supposed to look like an old VHS tape that contains a recording of an old 80s/90s broadcast of a live haunted house investigation. They really nail the feeling of nostalgia when you watch this. It really feels like a real old tape. But the issue is that they focus too much on that. We get these really well done commercials that at first are funny just because of how they really seem like an 80s/90s commercial, but the movie keeps cutting to these commercials over and over. The joke really starts to pound you over the head to the point where it essentially ruins the film. I want to see the strange events occurring in the live broadcast, not these well done but unfunny commercials. We occasionally get somebody fast forwarding through the commercials which is funny to see, but I really feel like the movie needed to fast forward through the commercials a lot more. It certainly is more of a comedy than a horror. The horror aspect is okay, but it can be ruined by the comedy, which is a problem that I find happens very often with comedy/horror films. They are two genres that are EXTREMELY difficult to mix and turn out well, yet so many independent film makers try to do it with horrible results. Just because Evil Dead 2 did it, doesn't mean any movie can. This film kind of makes it work, but it's not perfect. I think the films ending gives it a bit more of a boost though, because it's kind of cool.In the end, I think the concept to this is great, and it does work as a film that is trying to show that old nostalgic VHS tape style, but it just isn't entertaining enough. Maybe it would work if you showed someone this and told them it was real just to see their reactions, but other than that, it kind of falls flat.