The Entity (2015)

Director: Eduardo Schuldt

Cast: Rodrigo Falla, Daniella Mendoza, Carlos Casella

Synopsis: A group of students decide to study ‘reaction videos’ and are led toward an old film, hidden in the archive room of a cemetery.

It seems to me that if you’re going to make a movie in a specific sub-genre like found footage, you should at least endeavour to contribute something original. It’s now 16 years since Blair Witch Project was released, so it’s admittedly quite difficult to come up with something fresh, but if you can’t come up with even one original idea why bother making a movie in the first place? Instead of trying to come up with something a little different, Peruvian horror The Entity, rehashes ideas from other – much better – horror movies (Ringu, in particular) to provide us with something so devoid of a life of its own that if it was lying on the floor you’d poke it with a stick.

The plot sees four students deciding to make a video about the so-called phenomenon of ‘reaction videos’ – i.e. videos of people’s reactions to unexpectedly horrifying images – for their final college project. They’re the usual mixed bunch: a nice ordinary kid called Joshua (Rodrigo Falla), his ex-girlfriend, Carla (Daniella Mendoza), the quiet, studious Lucas (Carlos Casella) and the intensely annoying clown, Benjamin (Mario Gaviria). Carla recognises one of the people on the first video the group watch, so they decide to pay him a visit to find out what it was that horrified him so badly, but are informed by his older brother that he died shortly after watching the video. More worryingly, the friends who watched the film with him are also both dead. The agitated brother takes the students to the archive of a large cemetery in which the film currently resides and they decide to watch it for themselves to find out what it was about the film that horrified the three dead people so badly. Do you think that was a good move? Me, neither – and, as our students fall prey to an ancient curse, they no doubt sincerely begin to wish they’d made a film about Care in the Community for their college project instead of venturing onto the Dark Side of the web.

Found footage is now largely the domain of the impoverished movie-maker, but a shortage of money is no excuse for a dull plot which, despite being recycled, is uncompromisingly dull, offering no surprises and precious little horror. Characters run around in a panic with cameras apparently welded to their hands, offering us brief, shadowy glimpses of nothing very much before meeting their inevitable fate. At least Mendoza’s unusual looks are easy on the eye, and there is a reasonably effective twist in the final reel. That’s scant consolation, though.

(Reviewed 1st November 2015)