Altar (2017)
Starring Stefanie Estes, Jesse Parr, Deep Rai
Directed by Matthew Sconce
As the horror-movie reviewing bus grinds its gears ever-so-vindictively down the celluloid highway, I’d almost forgotten the last time that I’ve checked out a found-footage film worth the time and effort to pound these keys to. When I opened up my mail the other day, I received a small white envelope with a screening DVD inside, and the film’s name was Altar – while I had no idea what I was in store for, the first 5 or so minutes of this presentation almost left me with a dire taste in my mouth.
Directed by Matthew Sconce, Altar is one of those films that does take its time when it comes to formation, but when the foundation is a bit more securely fastened, the “surprise” factor is one of worthwhile attention, and this is really something coming from me, especially considering my disdain for the aforementioned style of presenting a film. Immediately I questioned the movie’s plausibility when a character’s new bride is seen in the shower, soaping up, and less than one minute later she’s out of the shower, hair dried and styled -makeup and jewelry in photo-shoot quality…yep, it was going to be another one of those. Well, as the movie rolled on I was quick to eat my words and set my peepers on a fairly-decent exhibition of frights and suspense. When the death of a man’s parents leaves him nothing short of a complete social malcontent, his sister takes it upon herself to rally the troops and surround him with supporting friends for a camping trip – JEEZUS, don’t these people know what trouble this kind of crap leads to? Anyway, the group of pals makes the trek into the woods (camera in tow, of course), and aside from the usual “don’t proceed any further” warning from an intently creepy local clutching an axe, the band of amigos trudges on and stumbles on an altar of unknown origin – it bleeds, it glows…you know, it basically emits every damn warning sign imaginable to those of a mid-level intelligence, but not this crew, NO WAY!
What follows is your basic “lost lambs terrorized by an unseen evil” in the woods production, although this was moderately paced (minus the tedious dialogue between friends), and some of the scares were genuine, but not overdone. Now there is a fair share of tremblematic-activity when it comes to the POV here, as one would expect, but it’s not nearly to the extent of some lower-budgeted presentations, and that’s always a bonus in my book. I could drone on til the cows come home with the details on this one, but I think it at least begs one watch for those who really dig these types of films, and while it won’t knock your flip-flops off, it’ll at least satiate the found-footage viewer for a short spell until the next bout of motion-sickness decides to infiltrate our DVD and Blu-ray players.
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Film
Categorized:Reviews
