I grew up in a time when this would have actually been shown on television; they did an astounding job of making everything look and feel authentic. Every bit of the video looked like it could have come right out of the time period it was trying for. Bravo! Some of the parts weren't entirely accurate, but most of that was either for comedic effect, dramatic effect, or simply being able to be understood. Audio distortion on VHS recordings of the time might interfere with actually watching and enjoying the movie. I understand the choice made.You know what the best part of it was? The inanity. The mundane quality of it. The commercials were perfect. The news broadcasts were absolutely flawless. Everything was so down to earth and believable that it made the whole thing even more unsettling. It actually scared me a little. That never happens with horror these days.It was profoundly easy to believe in, and it never really presented anything that made it hard to swallow as an actual broadcast. I have to applaud the tremendous effort put into this production for all of the variety of things happening in it: commercials, the haunted house special, the news segments...that had to have taken a huge amount of work, and it really paid off.Great job! This production is really fantastic. I found it suspenseful, genuinely frightening, and one of the very few "retro" productions that actually manages to keep its period immersion consistent throughout. This would be great to have on during your Halloween party, but it's also enjoyable to watch on its own, especially with others who can appreciate the effort.

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.

This could've and should've been terrific. The filmmakers totally nail the look and feel of cheap, local 80's TV and waste it on a poorly acted and terribly crafted found-footage horror story that doesn't work in any way, start to finish.There are moments when I truly thought I was watching an old VHS tape which makes it all the more sad that nothing besides the commercials are very well thought out. The story is truly lame as are the actors. Some so over the top you wouldn't be wrong thinking you'd stumbled into a high school play. That said, if these guys were given another venue, Adult Swim comes to mind, and some decent performers, this stuff could be damn entertaining.Drop the Poughkeepsie Tapes angle and you've got the second coming of SCTV here.

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.