825 Forest Road

Overall for entertainment value it was well worth watching, despite my criticisms. It started out really well with some genuine frights and effectively managed to achieve some macabre atmosphere building at a level superior to the average try hards. It exhibits an interesting structure revealing the story in an intriguing and playful, non linear manner, emphasising and amplifying through progressive revelation, the horrific aspects of events, with ever more frightening intensity, however progressively lost its impetus after the ludicrously inserted idea of the town gardening group came into things, an aspect promising more, but proving sort of useless after building up an expectation of more than ultimately did it deliver. (Maybe the sequel will centre around these guys and be named after, 'The Gardening Group'?) From there it started to fumble what had been achieved by revealing too obviously and gratuitously the monster/ghost when it made for a vastly more powerful element when left unseen and up to the suggestivity of the viewer's imagination. By 3/4 of the way through, these downturns lead to what I felt was a fairly disappointing ending, devoid of much climactic tension and seemingly set up secifically for an intended sequel, (wherein the same story might be repeated, but with minor variances and different actors?) Altogether, it was a fairly decent experience watching, apart from failing at these opportunities to fully exploit the numerous premises so well established during its introduction, (a complete waste), then going on to stumble over itself and lose significant impetus, defying good logic until no longer sufficiently delivering enough tension to provide a satisfactorily shocking ending. I felt the storyline increasingly devoid and, despite overall this film being quite an enjoyable and enetertaining experience, more than a cut above many of today's cliche replicating tries at a supernatural horror film, (825 even developing new aspects of the haunting genre by utilising some devices original and even evoking curiousity), instead of the expected TNT bang it might have delivered at its conclusion, it ultimately fizzled like a damp firecracker, due to the numerous opportunities I saw it failing to capitalise upon. (But maybe that's just fussy old me, expecting far too much? I'm sure most others will not have the same problems!)

Well that wasn’t very good…. Director should stick to found footage.

Awesome concept for a slow burn ghost story.

Yes thank you Cognetti for single handedly saving horror. Between this and the Hell House series! Nice real nice.

The first half was good , but the back half weakened with the nonlinear 3 perspectives repetition. The characters got progressively dumber and dumber. I reckon if they were smart and GTFO, we wouldn't have a movie, but still they were written too dumb.