21 Days (2014)

the audience applauded

A Major Disappointment

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

The title said it all. The lead was obnoxious, the supporting cast was terrible, it followed every possible cliche, the dialogue was the hottest of garbages, and 5 year old special needs kid could have written a more coherent storyline having a molly seizure. Instead of watching this movie, just go kneel in front of the nearest toilet and bash your head in between the rim and the seat for 90 minutes.

I couldn't even watch 21 mins of this movie, the main actors "filmmakers" were a little too overly aggressive and lacking in common sense within the first 15 mins. ** Kind of a spoiler but not really ... ** First Scene: They aggressively seek out a woman and son who were haunted, they run on to her property screaming her name and yelling questions at her. She freaks out and yells at them and they have the nerve to say "what the hell was that?" So sad, I had such high hopes.

21 DAYS is a straight-up copy of PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, set in your normal suburban home haunted by spirits unknown. A trio of characters decide to set up various cameras to capture any phenomena that occurs, and the story takes place over three weeks (go figure). That's all there is to it. The video quality is perhaps too bright and high quality, robbing the movie of atmosphere, and the acting is quite unconvincing which robs the film of its realism. In the end, the scares are diluted and the sense of familiarity that pervades the film makes it a chore to sit through.

This is a little bit of the paranormal activity MARKED ONES film as well as that movie itself and GRAVE ENCOUNTERS. I gave the filmmaker credit for creating a backstory for the film so that it is a complete story instead of some jump scares and then the camera drops.I know many filmmakers make their start in the found footage genre since it's relatively cheap to film in. So, if you're going to do a FF, then make the effort to make it different. In this case, the film succeeds. Locked in a haunted house for 21 days with cameras everywhere, how does an object move from the barn to the house? Creepy...but ultimately, why? Just the spirits/demons playing tricks and if so, on us or the characters? Nothing is really made of this event other than "WTF?" If it kept occurring, with more dangerous items being transported, it would have added a nice twist. Other than that, we get the doors closing, furniture jumping about, etc. All good stuff, always creepy, but we've seen it before.The problem with ALL found footage is the last ten minutes. People screaming and cross talking over themselves. It's always a mess and this is no different. The good this is there is a coda that explains a bit more so your last image isn't a dropped camera.There are some terrific ideas here that I wish had been explored more--they were different and could have taken the film in a different direction. But I liked it and enjoyed my time with it!