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5000+ Cooking Recipes

Food & Drink and Entertainment

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5400+ Recipes Cookbook - Browse the cookbook from appetizers to soups, salads to non-veg recipes,...

Beaches, Bungalows, and Burglaries

Tonya Kappes

4.0 (1 Ratings) Rate It

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Mae West, a far cry from the Hollywood actress, has been thrown for a loop. Her plush lifestyle in...

Mike Wilder (20 KP) rated Evidence (2013) in Movies

May 30, 2018

Evidence (2013)

2013 | Horror, Mystery

7.0

(1 Ratings)

Movie Rating

A good "found footage" film

Contains spoilers, click to show

This is a film made in the style of "found footage". The whole film is made from the perspective of whoever is filming at the time. The style was made famous with The Blair Witch Project and perfected in Cloverfield. I saw the trailer for this and thought it could be good. After trying to track down the film I discovered it had just been released here. So I got hold of a copy and sat back.

The film is about a group of friends Ryan (Ryan McCoy), Brett (Brett Rosenberg), Abi (Abigail Richie) & Ashley (Ashley Bracken) who are out camping and making a documentary about the experience. They discover a strange creature and the trip quickly turns deadly. Soon they are on the run from strange creatures and anonymous military personnel intent on stopping the creatures.

You may have noticed in the above paragraph that the characters all have the same names as the actor playing them. This was either due to a very lazy writer, or as the writer was also Ryan McCoy one of the actors, an attempt to make the film feel more real and the friendships believable. I feel that the latter is the case as the group comes off as good friends. They interact with each other in a very realistic and genuine way. Especially the female stars. They manage to portray a wide range of emotions from playful happiness to annoyed and then terrified. The opening scenes are very well done. With most "found footage" films, the introduction to the characters and the plot are usually badly done, they are kind of a mess trying to get all the information out to the viewer. However this film is the exception to the rule. It's very well put together and the script and the pacing of the characters introductions are very good. The story starts of as a pretty standard you meet the characters, they go camping then the twist, they are not alone out there. The twist is where these type of films usually fail. But Evidence manages to succeed big time. You see a creature in the distance then during the night all hell lets loose. From this moment on the film is pure tension. I have not seen a film where for the whole last hour I was on edge. I was expecting something to happen at any moment. And it happens in so many different ways and at random times leaving you unable to let your guard down. Unlike many films in this genre, not even the camera operator is safe as the camera gets passed around for various reasons. The other great thing that I found was there was also a good reason to have the camera still on while they were running for their lives. Usually this is overlooked and we are meant to ignore that but here the reason is good and helps to make the film believable.

However with all the shocks and surprises, the film makers fail in trying to do too much. Towards the end the characters encounter many different types of creatures and I felt this was a little over the top. If they had kept to one or two different creatures it would have made a little more sense. As it was you are left very confused at the end with little or no answers as to what was going on. It worked with Cloverfield but here it missed the mark. Not by much and the film as a whole more than makes up for it.

There are a few plot holes but most can be explained away. However this is still a great addition to the "found film" genre. There have been many attempts to recreate these types of films and many fail. However people will continue to try and sometimes out of all the attempts you find something a little different, one that stands out from the rest. That one is called Evidence.

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Acanthea Grimscythe (300 KP) rated They Feed in Books

Feb 21, 2019

They Feed

Jason Parent | 2018 | Horror

8.0

(1 Ratings)

Book Rating

Jason Parent’s They Feed has been on my radar for quite some time. A few months ago I snagged a galley of it. Things got in the way, but I finally found the time to sit down and straight up devour this title.

Set in Galveston National Park in Kansas, They Feed is the terrifying story of a what goes bump in the night. When a few groups, for completely different reasons, end up stranded in the dark, they quickly find themselves pitted against an unknown enemy that seems almost invincible, and every bit vicious. Can they survive until sunrise?

Let’s face it. When it comes to horror books, characters are dispensable. It’s hard to really get attached to anyone because we expect them to die. Therefore I’m always pleasantly surprised when there’s any amount of character development–and Parent’s stuffed this book with it. We’ve got a loathsome woman that, despite not being able to stand, I found myself cheering for. An angsty, delinquent teenager with redeemable qualities. A former convict. A group of frat boys behaving stupidly. All of these are present in this book, and Parent writes them in a way that had me both loving and hating several of them. (I cheered more than once.)

Plotwise, the book is pretty straightforward. It does switch perspectives, but thankfully it doesn’t alternate between past and present. This made the story flow really well, alongside perfect pacing on Parent’s part. There were also times I found my heart racing as I hoped for certain outcomes, and having that edge-of-your-seat thrill is one of my favorite feelings.

This is the first book I’ve read by Jason Parent, but it definitely won’t be the last. Let me put it this way: I’m even less likely to go camping now than I would have been last week. I’d like to thank NetGalley and Sinister Grin Press for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

http://theghastlygrimoire.com/2019/02/20/book-review-they-feed-by-jason-parent/