"Karma's a bitch," says Devon Sawa's Bill to James, the protagonist of 388 Arletta Avenue.James (played with a nicely dead-on everyman vacancy by Nick Stahl) has just confronted Bill with several disturbing facts: his home has been repeatedly broken into, his computer tampered with, his cat has been "replaced," and now his wife is missing. And that's just the beginning.Turns out James and his friends tormented Bill relentlessly during grade school and James, in his desperation, believes Sawa's character is behind it.Though that's far from the central thesis of Randall Cole's latest feature, it's a very engaging sidebar and probably the most alluring plot point in what seems at first to be a pretty standard found-footage psycho-stalker creeper.Except that 388 is actually a very intelligently-crafted film with an almost diabolically clever script. Stahl is tormented by everything from phantom mix CDs, footage of his wife bound and gagged somewhere, and ultimately set-up for her impending murder (after he actually DOES kill someone). While I was never bored by this film, I does suffer from a low-energy level at times. Stahl is left, quite unfortunately, to carry the film as Kirshner, an enjoyable and underused actress, is MIA (no pun intended) for most of the film. He does a commendable job, playing his ordinariness with an unsettling true-to-life banality, and he's never very likable... which is a very hard thing to achieve and still keep an audience's focus. It also probably contains one of the most creepy, amoral villains you'll encounter on film.Don't expect a traditional thriller, and certainly not something that will make you feel warm and cozy. It's one man's descent into hell for absolutely no reason other than someone's sadistic kicks.

It's Friday night. It's raining. It's one week and then we have Halloween. A perfect night for a horror movie. We don't check '388 Arletta Avenue' on IMDb, so I can see this film very objectively. The movie starts, as a true movie lover, I'm excited about what's going to follow. 10 minutes later, I start regretting. Because I realize the acting is so bad and there is no actual story. It's a dumb and stupid movie trying to make money out of the popular 'documentary style' movies. OK it's fine ,as a director you choose to use that technique, but that doesn't mean you don't need a DECENT STORY. Or that you don't need DECENT ACTORS. The movie really annoys, a lot of dead moments and the main actor ... is no actor at all. After a while you see this movie as a big joke. Big, big disappointment, don't ruin your evening by watching this... eh movie is not the right word. I would say 0/10. But IMDb doesn't have that option so it's 1/10.

The trailer for this promised much, but in actual fact there is very little here. Maybe a great movie for a voyeur, everyone else should stay well away. At around 1hr 26mins it is quite probably a good 26mins too long, and could have been done as a TV special or similar. The main problem is that very little happens apart from the stranger watching them, which is happening from the opening shot, this is then dragged out for the rest of the movie and you find nothing out about the stranger or his/her motives. After an hour we just wanted it to end, and when it did, it gave absolutely nothing away and left you just thinking you should have maybe washed the car or done something useful rather than waste your time on this. This maybe harsh but, sorry, a complete waste of time.

This is a movie that rides on the trend of the whole found footage/hidden camera movie sub-genre. But is it doing anything new or interesting enough with it? Not really.It's of course hard to come up with something new and remaining fresh and interesting, since most had been done with the concept already and there is only so much you can do with it, since it's a quite restricting concept. It's restricted with its settings and movements and it is hard to keep things interesting for about 90 minutes, without starting to repeat yourself. This movie however does become a bit tiresome after a short while.It mostly becomes a tiresome movie since it maintains its 'mystery' for its entire running time. You don't know what is going on exactly, or what direction the movie will be heading at. This all sounds like some good and positive points about the movie but it's actually more sort of annoying, since basically everything can happen at the end, when the big 'reveal' comes. The movie doesn't drop any hints and stuff just happens, without you feeling involved with any of it. I kept thinking to myself; there better be a good resolution to all of this by the end, that explains everything as well, to let all of the events make sense. But no, in my opinion the movie takes a cheap way out and it absolutely wasn't satisfying enough and it's the sort of ending that leaves more questions than answers, especially when you start thinking back about the movie.It of course still could had been good and worked out all if the movie was a bit more tense. For a thriller it is surely lacking some good tension at times and doesn't ever gets you involved enough as a viewer, though the movie still tries to achieve this through its concept. The concept and camera-position are supposed to place you in the mind of the stalker. It's a voyeuristic movie but again, since you don't know any of the motivations or reasons for the events, you don't ever feel involved with it. It just doesn't do a good enough job at making and keeping things interesting and fresh enough to keep you interested in the story, its mystery and to what will happen with its characters.I did like Nick Stahl in his role, on a more positive note. He has to carry most of the movie entirely on his own and does a pretty good job with it. Too bad that the movie didn't really knew what to do with his character. It's not the worst thing you will ever see but it just isn't exactly a good or original enough movie to recommend either.5/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/