There's nothing more boring than hanging out with friends when suddenly they break out their home movies and want everyone to watch them, because home movies are usually a string of mundane things that no one else would care about except the people filming them. This movie capitalizes on that idea. The two lead characters are a middle-aged married couple who talk calmly and speak in a banal manner about regular everyday activities like work and parenting, and then at the same time they intermittently take a break from the mundane to capture, torture, and kill people. It's pure genius. The audience is bored, not understanding what's going on, when suddenly the man and his wife (Wayne and Andrea) start talking about how to trap and kill people, and the audience takes a double take ("are they talking about what I THINK they're talking about?") and so this roller coaster of a movie begins. Wayne and Andrea seem normal and even a little boring, but they do some unspeakable things to people, and they're so nonchalant about it that the movie is even more chilling.

These people look like everyday people you might find in any town in the USA (kudos to the actors for making the characters even more believable...I'm never talking to any of my neighbors ever again...do you know how many rides home I accept on a daily basis when strangers see me walking and offer to help? Not anymore, fuck that). And the paranoia builds even more as the movie goes on, with regular everyday situations getting a sick twist. Sometimes movies are even more effective than they mean to be. I've always been unsettled when I watch movies (even if they're not horror movies) that put characters into awkward or embarrassing situations. It's probably the social anxiety in me talking, but any time the people onscreen are embarrassed or socially uncomfortable, I cringe and squirm.

It takes a smart filmmaker to know how to make an audience cringe by taking a second look at everyday events. Similar scenes where the two main characters are talking to potential victims are similarly unsettling because we want to scream at the characters to run away (not that they ever listen to us). Also, when we see the couple interacting with their friends and family, we never know if they're going to snap at any moment and kill someone, and that makes every social interaction they have with anyone onscreen even more difficult to watch because crazy people are unpredictable, and thus we are thrown off guard and we never know what the characters are going to do. But at the same time, the characters don't ACT crazy, at least not around their friends, and that makes me wonder what my neighbors might be up to behind closed doors. That's it, I'm never talking to anyone ever again.

As for the gruesome goods that horror fans look for, in this movie a lot of the gore happens off screen, which is to be expected with movies that don't have much of a budget, but what I didn't expect was how I squirmed and flinched even when the movie WASN'T showing any direct violence. When Andrea was holding the camera focused on Nick while he was bent over a on a table in the basement, holding a wire brush and moving like he's using it on the victim, even though the film didn't show what was happening, the SUGGESTION of what was going on was disturbing enough to make me cover my eyes. It's rare for a movie to have that effect on my jaded cynical ass, so I appreciated it. And later in the movie, when the movie shows more actual grue, like Wayne holding pieces he's cut off the bodies, we almost wish the camera would go back to cutting away again instead of showing the gore (I never thought I'd say that...I must be getting soft in my old age).

Everyone in the movie displays some good acting, especially considering that the side actors give such believable performances as everyday people, slightly uncomfortable at being filmed by their friends. I know I for one will never look at my friends the same way again if they start filming me while I'm hanging out with them. First I can't get rides home from work, then I can't walk down the street without staring suspiciously at every creepy middle-aged couple I pass, now I won't be able to take part in my friend's home movies. This movie has ruined everything for me. And I respect any movie that can make me look at an everyday occurrence in a new way. Mainstream movies may not have the balls to show an entire film in home-movie style and paint slightly boring, everyday people as sick, twisted murderers, but luckily we have indie filmmakers like these ready to pick up the slack and give demented fans like me something to get excited about.

Given the nature of the movie we don't get to know any of the victims at all because they're vagrants picked up by the two killers at random, but we also don't get to know the two main characters very well because the movie isn't traditional with a plot setup, it really is just a bunch of home movies of the man and wife going about their daily lives and killing people on the side. A little more character development would have helped. Plus there are a few scenes where I didn't know who was holding the camera, because the wife was on camera and the husband was gone and the son was upstairs, so... was the camera floating by itself? I think at this point the movie was switching more to a third-person perspective, but it was a little confusing and could have been a smoother transition.

This movie is tough to watch. Even if it's not as graphic as it could be, the mere suggestion of the disgusting things Wayne and Andrea are doing is enough to unsettle me, especially since I live in a Midwest town full of Wayne and Andrea look alikes. This movie is a twisted little exercise in suggestion and manipulation, and the filmmakers show great promise. Seek it out and watch it, I promise you'll become as antisocial as I plan to be now after seeing it.

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