Daylight (2013)

Wonderful character development!

disgusting, overrated, pointless

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

DAYLIGHT is another entry in the found footage horror scheme of indie film-making, although this one goes in a different direction to most. This is more of a mystery and investigation type film, with plenty of scene changes and a large supporting cast to do justice to the mysterious storyline. The story is about child abuse in a small town, a scarily believable premise, and it plays out in a way which suffers from the usual indie problems but feels fresher than most.

What a mess this movie was! I am almost at a loss for words. How do I even describe this movie?? Let's see....a super slow set up, about 10 different plot lines by the end including - paranormal elements, time travel, abused children, emotional trauma, murder, teleportation.. all culminating to a end that was nothing but people screaming, running around the various locations they teleport to, doors slamming, and camera interference, all of which lead to nothing. This movie tried so damn hard to do something different, but we were left with way too many plot developments, none of which get resolved. If this review sounds like a mess, it's simply because I am trying to describe the worst movie I have seen all year. Mind bending amounts of awfulness here. Oh, and the acting was horrible. At one point the camera guy actually whines "Oh man! Not again!!" after being teleported to a different location.

"Daylight" is another tedious entry in the micro-budget, c-horror "found footage" sub-genre. I happen to really enjoy these kinds of films and have viewed and reviewed many dozens of them over the last couple of years. This one is, unfortunately pretty typical of majority of these weekend-shoot videos. The acting is what you'd expect from a community college drama course and is often distractingly worse (the kind of acting that makes it seem like they are reading from the script for the first time). This makes it difficult to watch this one all the way through (esp as it just seemed to drone on and on...), but I think to review a film, you need to watch it all the way, just to be fair. Anyway, there were ZERO SCARES (in fact, nothing even remotely interesting in that regard - it was almost like a very long, very bland documentary instead of a horror film), and the plot was the standard dull fare for a supernatural/"demonic" storyline. I think the writers and directors intended some kind of psychological component but couldn't quite decide what kind of film they wanted to make. There's no mystery to the story, no intellectual subtext - it's just a haphazard effort that lacked cohesion and any kind of suspense- building on any level, ultimately. So, unfortunately, I wasted $5 on this rental (which is actually a pretty high price of admission when compared to most other films in this sub-genre on Amazon Instant) - which is a lot to throw away on a rental. Hopefully, this review will save you some money and time, as I definitely can't recommend this one. Really the only positives for this one are the use of quite good editing software (if heavily overused, esp with regard to the usual "found footage" camera flutters and video distortion) and graphics, high quality HD cameras, they did provide at least a full-length movie (though again that was a plus and a minus), the lack of tedious background music (so common to these kinds of films) and some kinda cool DVD cover artwork, which actually sold me on renting this clunker. I just want to save the viewing public from wasting their money, despite the phony reviews posted by family and friends of the filmmakers eager to earn some of their investment back.

Great Indie Flick! Shocking ending and really cool special affects. Cool story, is it based on true events? I can't wait to see it again. It is a much better production than some suspense horror flicks I have seen from the big picture houses. It might offend some strongly religious Christians so be forewarned. The little girl Sidney did a great job acting in this and so did the Priest. I saw this in a theater in Evansville where I think it was made. I definitely will download if or rent it to watch again when it comes out on DVD or VOD. It's not a slasher film at all. If you liked the Excorcist and the Omen series you will enjoy this as it is an actual story.