I will start off by saying that I'm a very big fan of found-footage horror. If this is already a genre you like too, then you'll probably enjoy the first half of this film.
If also you enjoy going on crazy acid trips (personally, I don't), then you'll also enjoy the second half.
My biggest criticism of Mr. Jones is that it is a very uneven film. Some of this is standard for the found-footage genre: starts off tame and ordinary and then escalates into something horrifying. Mr. Jones starts out as a story about a couple who move to a remote woodland location to make a nature documentary. When the documentary idea flops, the couple happen to stumble upon "Mr. Jones' workshop." Penny -- half of the aforementioned couple - - is a photographer who is very familiar with the weird "art pieces" associated with Mr. Jones: bizarre totems mailed out to random people over the last few decades. No one knows who Mr. Jones is and Penny and Scott believe they have found him.
Here, the film becomes a documentary again. Scott goes to New York to interview "Mr. Jones experts": art curators, anthropologists, and supposed recipients of his "art pieces." Meanwhile, Penny sets out photographing the totems out in the woods and records Mr. Jones (ceremonially?) setting them up.
If that had been the tone for the rest of the film -- mockumentary of couple profiling a potentially dangerous crazed weirdo engaged in some kind of bizarre folk magic -- that sounds like a pretty good film, right? Maybe half documentary, half couple panicking in the woods?
Alas, no such dream was produced. Instead, it turns out Mr. Jones' "art pieces" are a way to keep the "dream world" and our world separate. Penny and Scott disturb this balance and end up inside a literal nightmare. This ruined the film for me: earlier, the filmmakers took such care to establish a kind of verisimilitude in terms of who had cameras, how they were recording, etc. -- but then, in the "dream world," Penny and Scott are seen from angles without any cameras. Because dreams, I guess? They run around and scream a lot for half an hour and then the film has some kind of vague "full circle" effect ending.
Perhaps as two separate films, they wouldn't be bad. It's the uneven genre and tone that spoils it, though. Clear found-footage / mockumentary for the first half, weird (definitely not found-footage) acid trip for the second.
If also you enjoy going on crazy acid trips (personally, I don't), then you'll also enjoy the second half.
My biggest criticism of Mr. Jones is that it is a very uneven film. Some of this is standard for the found-footage genre: starts off tame and ordinary and then escalates into something horrifying. Mr. Jones starts out as a story about a couple who move to a remote woodland location to make a nature documentary. When the documentary idea flops, the couple happen to stumble upon "Mr. Jones' workshop." Penny -- half of the aforementioned couple - - is a photographer who is very familiar with the weird "art pieces" associated with Mr. Jones: bizarre totems mailed out to random people over the last few decades. No one knows who Mr. Jones is and Penny and Scott believe they have found him.
Here, the film becomes a documentary again. Scott goes to New York to interview "Mr. Jones experts": art curators, anthropologists, and supposed recipients of his "art pieces." Meanwhile, Penny sets out photographing the totems out in the woods and records Mr. Jones (ceremonially?) setting them up.
If that had been the tone for the rest of the film -- mockumentary of couple profiling a potentially dangerous crazed weirdo engaged in some kind of bizarre folk magic -- that sounds like a pretty good film, right? Maybe half documentary, half couple panicking in the woods?
Alas, no such dream was produced. Instead, it turns out Mr. Jones' "art pieces" are a way to keep the "dream world" and our world separate. Penny and Scott disturb this balance and end up inside a literal nightmare. This ruined the film for me: earlier, the filmmakers took such care to establish a kind of verisimilitude in terms of who had cameras, how they were recording, etc. -- but then, in the "dream world," Penny and Scott are seen from angles without any cameras. Because dreams, I guess? They run around and scream a lot for half an hour and then the film has some kind of vague "full circle" effect ending.
Perhaps as two separate films, they wouldn't be bad. It's the uneven genre and tone that spoils it, though. Clear found-footage / mockumentary for the first half, weird (definitely not found-footage) acid trip for the second.