When his family says they've had enough, a prankster dad gets serious. Dead serious.
Shoe-string found footage of a family's descent into the abyss. The camera work is chaotic, and often so poor that I began to sympathize with the critics of this genre who suffer motion sickness just by looking at the screen. And yet the dynamics and the emotion come across as raw and immediate, qualities that might have been lost through competent cinematography.
It does stick to the pure form of FF, with a minimal framing device in the title and notice at the very start; all the music and sound effects are diegetic; and the setting and dialogue are banal. A few passages where the presence of the camera is implausible, but few FFs overcome that problem entirely, and it's nothing some security camera POVs wouldn't have fixed (Dad could have splashed out on them after the intruder at the party).
The only other thing to note is the performance of the father's role - very effective in delivering a character who is odious yet likeable.
Overall: Raw material made interesting by the central character.
Shoe-string found footage of a family's descent into the abyss. The camera work is chaotic, and often so poor that I began to sympathize with the critics of this genre who suffer motion sickness just by looking at the screen. And yet the dynamics and the emotion come across as raw and immediate, qualities that might have been lost through competent cinematography.
It does stick to the pure form of FF, with a minimal framing device in the title and notice at the very start; all the music and sound effects are diegetic; and the setting and dialogue are banal. A few passages where the presence of the camera is implausible, but few FFs overcome that problem entirely, and it's nothing some security camera POVs wouldn't have fixed (Dad could have splashed out on them after the intruder at the party).
The only other thing to note is the performance of the father's role - very effective in delivering a character who is odious yet likeable.
Overall: Raw material made interesting by the central character.