The Hat Goes Wild (2012)
Six Montréal CEGEP students head out on a canoe trip to celebrate their graduation. A web of secrets and lies... a stash of coke and cash... the decaying body of a dead biker... their home video falls into the wrong hands as the beauty of the Quebec bush becomes a nightmare... then it gets worse.
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Excellent but underrated film
It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.
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.
By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.
While suffering from a few dramatic flaws that defy conventions of normal behavior, The Hat Goes Wild deserves credit for delivering a fairly original story about a group of English Montreal CEGEP (junior college) students who set out on a wilderness canoe trip only to find themselves the victims of a series of unfortunate events.Without going into detail, suffice to say that the flaws are those centering around how one would reasonably expect people to react during and after the setbacks introduced by the the film's plot. They just don't ring true. Alas, had the film followed the conventions of normal behavior, the story would have ended well before it began, so I suppose some slack has to be allowed so that the film could unfold.The biggest flaw, however, is the found-footage approach, with the entire film being the product of a video camera toted by one of the campers.For one thing, it makes for poor visuals and the film would have been better served by filming it in a conventional manner. Not only that, but the found footage premise is rendered even more absurd as the movie's plot reaches it's conclusion.The story premise, however, is sound once you get past the aforementioned flaws, and it will hold you to the end.