Chichibu Demon (2011 Video)
4/10
Not Enough of Anything; Nothing to Spoil Even
26 February 2024
I usually don't leave reviews because I think the character minimum is too high... but given there are only two of them I figured I may as well. Especially since the positive one "Still Reeling" seems to be for a different film entirely, literally. Because it has nothing to do with the film they mention and there is nothing in this film that would make eating difficult, nor is there anything here to make you think. Excepting of course thoughts like "why didn't the filmmakers have more of a story planned, why didn't they create discernible characters, etc?"

I am one of those people who likes found footage enough that I'll even watch bad found footage. Not the screaming/running kind, but the atmospheric mystery sort. And there's something about foreign found footage that makes it even more watchable. Koji Shiraishi makes some great found footage films but even his bad ones are fun to watch.

This is not fun, this is not a good watch. It could have been. But the characters are beyond bland: they're completely interchangeable. There's barely any story here. There's barely anything here. It's the typical D level found footage of a wisp of a mystery, random weirdness, running and screaming from horrors unseen and unheard, lots of close ups of nothing and every angle is terrible.

A group of young men (friends, colleagues, mix of that? Who knows) go to a city to film some haunted stuff. They find a suspension bridge in the woods where people see lights in the sky, eventually those people go crazy and commit suicide. And it spreads like a virus, and one by one our crew members get the bug. We learn very little about the lights and any meaning behind them. There's some Sumerian symbols or whatever about death but it adds up to little except "suicide is contagious," I guess.

There are a few interesting ideas, I'll give the film that. For instance, the first suicide victim's sneakers are inexplicably left outside one of our crew's front door. It remains inexplicable and nothing more like that happens.

But unless you've already watched everything under the sun, skip this one. Hopefully a good fan editor finds it someday because there is enough here that could be spruced up. Like, at one point we're told the crew hears screams in the woods but we don't hear anything. Edit in some screams. Use a few editing and graphic tricks to distinguish the characters. There's very little information about this movie online and maybe there's a reason for that.
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