the only reason I tried out this movie was because it had the EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomenon) gimmick attached to it. I first saw this in a horror movie "White Noise" 2004 with Michael Keaton and it was fun, even a bit scary for how young I was at the time.
The people making this film seem not to understand what EVP even is. Of course it's not a real thing --- there's no such thing as ghosts --- but the idea of the phenomenon, being able to hear very faint voices in static or empty background noise of audio recordings, is a fun and scary concept to play with. This film seems not to understand this at all, as every instance of EVP that is shown involves no soft, barely audible sounds that might be voices, but some loud as hell stereotypical "demonic voice" clearly and unambiguously speaking words, easily understood and understandable just by turning the volume up slightly.
On top of that the film seems to give up on this gimmick around half-way through and begins to resort to the stereotypical haunting gimmick, with visual hallucinations and spooky dreams. Just listening to an EVP once seems to cause the demon to just instantly attack the person and try to kill them. No subtlety, no suspense, no slow-burn creepiness, just a full-blown Big Scary Face In A Mirror and then kill.
Underlying the failure of the main gimmick, the writing and dialogue is abysmal. It's so terrible it's impossible to tell if the actors are genuinely bad or just too inexperienced to make anything worthwhile out of the script
The people making this film seem not to understand what EVP even is. Of course it's not a real thing --- there's no such thing as ghosts --- but the idea of the phenomenon, being able to hear very faint voices in static or empty background noise of audio recordings, is a fun and scary concept to play with. This film seems not to understand this at all, as every instance of EVP that is shown involves no soft, barely audible sounds that might be voices, but some loud as hell stereotypical "demonic voice" clearly and unambiguously speaking words, easily understood and understandable just by turning the volume up slightly.
On top of that the film seems to give up on this gimmick around half-way through and begins to resort to the stereotypical haunting gimmick, with visual hallucinations and spooky dreams. Just listening to an EVP once seems to cause the demon to just instantly attack the person and try to kill them. No subtlety, no suspense, no slow-burn creepiness, just a full-blown Big Scary Face In A Mirror and then kill.
Underlying the failure of the main gimmick, the writing and dialogue is abysmal. It's so terrible it's impossible to tell if the actors are genuinely bad or just too inexperienced to make anything worthwhile out of the script