Skinwalker Ranch (2013)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

The Worst Film Ever

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Seemingly this film was based on a real event which occurred at Skinwalker Ranch in Utah. I haven't checked up on the details but I am guessing it would be fair to say that the terminology should be 'loosely based' on real events, as the premise of this one centres around a missing eight-year-old boy who vanished in a flash of light, leading to a team of paranormal experts to pitch up at the ranch to investigate while recording the increasingly strange goings on.Skinwalkers could be described as a cross between a docudrama and a found-footage film. It seems as though it doesn't have the best reputation but I have to say I don't agree with this assessment, as I found this to be a pretty involving low-budget genre flick. It's a movie whose premise openly invites ambiguity and the film-makers certainly are not shy in leaving things unexplained in this one. There are all manner of strange events which unfold here, including a giant nocturnal wolf creature, a strange cave replete with unusual drawings, an alien creature, a ghostly child, vehicles that auto destruct in the night and an old VHS tape which contains clues to the mystery. While in the background there appears to be people watching from afar, implying that there is an involvement of a shady secret government organisation in the mix too. So, there really is quite a bit going on with this one and a lot of things have been thrown together. For me, the lack of explaining wasn't very much of a concern because I think that quite often questions are more interesting than answers. I would therefore recommend this one to people who don't mind open-ended mysteries that allow for personal interpretation. On the whole, I thought this was an interesting movie.

Let's get this out of the way first: I love found-footage movies and I love alien-themed movies. A combination that generated like... Only one great movie, a couple of good ones, and the rest (they're not so many by the way and I wish there were more and better made ones) is composed of mediocre movies - if you are a fan of the genre. Otherwise what I refer to as mediocre you may prefer to call "a steaming pile of trash". So if "alien-stuff motif + found-footage / documentary" does not sound appealing to you, you can stop reading this right now - your time will be better applied to something else.If, however, the motif sounded interesting, I still don't have the best of news. As the title of this review already spoiled, Skinwalker Ranch for me fit right in the third rank - the mediocre movies. I don't recommend watching it in any other scenario than completely alone and in a complete dark environment. This will maximize the tension and the fear factor of the movie and make it worth watching.The CGI is so-so, the plot has a fair share of clichés and it's nothing innovative. I have the feeling that they stuffed a bunch of different "tension-makers" that did not fit very well in the same plot, but at the same time I wonder if the movie would be any better with these plot elements trimmed out. I did not consider this to be a waste of my time, I watched under the right conditions and got pretty tense at some parts. But it is far from the best movie I've seen in this genre. Watch it "at your own risk".

Looking at my ratings for the last 8 years or so, I came to realize that this is the 6th movie that I have rated a 1. Skinwalker Ranch is probably the one film that I could single out that really, really deserves it. More so than Batman & Robin, more so than the remake of The Fog. Even more so than Barely Legal Lesbian Vampires. Where do one start to describe the utter, brilliant mess of nothingness that makes Skinwalker Ranch? First of all, the concept of this being a true, eerie place really is unsettling. After watching this, I couldn't care less about the whole place though. People often take a dislike to the lost- footage genre in general, but I don't really have any problems with that. I loved movies like Chronicle and Europa Report. But then again, movies like this really gives the genre a bad name, if not filmmaking in general. Using half-ways familiar actors like Michael Horse (Twin Peaks) really destroys much of that docu-aspect from the very beginning. The whole movie is a mishmash of a wide variety of paranormal concepts, that all has in common that they end nowhere. There are unbelievable amounts of easy scares, absurdly plastic-felt acting/directing throughout the entire movie, and the most horrifying aspect of the entire movie is the laughably bad script. I easily find forgiving aspects in the most hated of productions, and I just as easily get jumpy, even from the most ridiculous horrors. But this gave me absolutely nothing but series of yawns, some laughs at the stupidest/most "scary" scenes, and a great deal of sighs. Not even "so bad that it is good" like Trolls 2. Just stay miles and miles away from this garbage.

Man I couldn't even watch half of this the first time, I had to look away from the screen. I could feel the the shocker moments coming, and it was way too intense. Looking through the night cameras was too much, I was just waiting for the scary alien face to show up. Lol. Plus, there is like a bear type creature, a kid ghost running around, and light orbs, this is totally insane bro. This is one of the scariest movies I've ever seen. Plus, the crew keeps chasing after the monsters, they find a cave that the bear creature was crawling into, so of course they have to get ropes and jump in hahahahah. There's just too much horror for a single sitting...my advice is if you watch it...don't do it alone or in the dark in the basement.