They're Watching (2016)

A Brilliant Conflict

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

May contain spoilers.The premise of They're Watching is an entertaining one, and the movie begins with promise. A woman buys a ramshackle house in a remote Moldovan village on an episode of "House Hunters: Global." The crew returns six months later to see what she has done to the place. These are the bones of the film. Unfortunately the film is little more than bones.The thing I hated most about They're Watching was Kate (Carrie Genzel), the angry, spiteful producer of House Hunters. She is an abysmal character. She is supposed to be a terrible character, you're not supposed to like her. But, she is mean without reason- she isn't relatable in any way. Really, all of the characters fall a bit short- underdeveloped and not believable. At one point, cameraman Greg (David Alpay) is awoken by Sarah (Mia Faith) while in the midst of a PTSD-induced nightmare. As angry Moldovans gather around the house, carrying torches and wielding axes, Greg finally opens up about his time in Afghanistan and then they have sex. Beautiful.At least we get some sort of satisfaction in seeing the playful flirting between Sarah and Greg develop into something more tangible, albeit short lived, because the film's conclusion offers no satisfaction at all. Plot deficiencies aside, of which there are not a few, the final scenes of They're Watching rely heavily on CGI and, in so doing, fall woefully short. The effects are intentionally over-the-top. They are comical, but not in a campy, good way. They are comically pathetic, trying to compensate for a total lack of substance. In that vein, throughout the film, barring perhaps only Greg's brief description of Taliban violence (which here serves as a form of foreplay), the dialogue is also devoid of substance. Instead, the script relies upon jeers and profanity directed at the native Moldovans.More reviews: medium.com/@gavondo

Let me start by saying I am a big horror fan and have seen both the good and the bad of indie productions. This movie is one of the bad. I typically reserve reviews for movies that have a significant amount of phony planted reviews and boy is this one of them.It suffers every cliché on the list for shaky cam/documentary style films including unlikeable characters, stupid decision making, and LOTS of wasted screen time that in no way was necessary to the plot. I won't go into details but the plot cannot be saved from the beginning because the very first scene spoils the ending already. If you love SciFi channel level cheesy special effects then maybe you will love the finale (seriously it looks bad, going against the basic rules of low budget production).Spare yourself that misery of reading all the bloated scores and watching this mediocre mess.

Well after watching this film, I have many mixed feelings, but most in a good way.We start out watching a film crew that seems to be based on a house hunting abroad type of show. With that being said, this film actually starts off kind of fun, mimicking shows like "house hunters international", and that's where the similarities end.After the burst of humour in the first five minutes or so, I would suspect it would wear off, and it did, but not in a way of a "Scary Movie" type of film, but it just went in a different direction. The next scenes we witness include really over the top acting, but about fifty minutes into the film it was actually not too bad, the acting seemed to get better as time moved on, we get the distracted feeling of prediction of the story itself, but for some reason on how it was implemented seemed to keep breathing new life into this film. "They're Watching" is a well constructed film based on old values of folk stories, with a modern twist, in the end that modern twist could possibly time stamp this film, it did have at sometimes terrible CGI, but remember keep the budget in mind, and just use your imagination. If this film had a few extra dollars to spend on special effects, it would of helped the production tremendously, but since it didn't get that we have what we have, so all in all, it's was a fun watch. Thanks for reading.

I created an account just to save some of you the time. This movie is without a doubt being highly rated by its creators to get views. 3/10. The story is weaker than Lou Gehrig's grip on gavel, and the "twist," if you can even call it that, is so anticlimactic, and the entire premise is so poorly conceived that it almost qualifies as some av ant-grade, meta-parody– only worse. Much much worse. The only redeeming quality of this horrible film were some performances that these poor actors were able to muster up amid st the cringe-worthy script. Nothing funny. Nothing clever. Nothing worth watching. Move on. Or rather, movie on.