Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Expected more

As Good As It Gets

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

I dig up many horror movies on the web I haven't seen yet. This one seemed to surface on its own. "Hooked Up" follows two young guy friends who venture to Barcelona looking for some plain old fun. They meet two girls and one of them knows of an abandoned house they could go party at. Already being drunk, they all decide it would be a good idea to go check it out. One of the guy friends is filming everything on his iphone. The director probably really did shoot most of this film with some type of iphone camera, but its not noticeable at all. The camera work, for found footage, is top notch. It seems the director really had an in depth idea for this movie. Once they characters enter the haunted dwelling, the movie really takes off and what follows is a ton of disturbing, loud, and bloody mayhem. I really liked the character development in this movie. The acting seemed really raw and realistic. The two leads had very different personalities but were still close friends, which is often the case in real life. I really liked how we saw Peter, one of the leads, kind of slowly go mad. From the opening scene we saw how Peter had a little bit of a temper. Once trapped, his anger escalated really fast, resulting in him acting very impulsive, violent, and selfish. Towards his best friend.This movie is also very scary. It takes an approach somewhat similar to REC, or possibly even Grave Encounters. A group of people trapped in a big building. Although they are similar, they are also very different. This film has you guessing if what is going on is supernatural or not. Then just when you think you have it all figured out, another layer of complexity is added. As soon as the friends enter the house, the movie moves at a fast horror packed pace. This is also a very imaginative horror movie, because the director plays with many different horror tropes, including one of my favorites: (**SPOILER ALERT**.............) a hungry, skinnily deformed, very scary person chained in the dark in a corner on one of the floors of the house. This was very unexpected for me, and it scared the HELL out of me. Peter is the one who finds this person, and even after all the mayhem that had already been going on, Peter decides to trust this person to lead him through out the very dark and scary house to safety. This is an extremely intense and scary scene for the viewer, as the questionable person keeps on turning around to the camera to make sure we are still following her. Her voice is very scary and the way she fast walks is very unsettling. Through this journey amongst floors not only does Peter lose his sense of direction, but so does the viewer, leaving us in a state of complete vulnerability and filled with dread. The fact that this is a found footage movie makes it so much more effective. The way Peter blew up mentally was entertaining, raw, and believable. The female characters were pretty. The horror was intense. Overall I rate this movie 10 out of 10 because it is rare that I find a found footage film that is truly unforgettable, and this is one of them. Follow my other reviews!

I detest movies which start with a 3-minute segment showing a guy (or gal) vomiting into a toilet bowl. I detest movies which feature two thoroughly worthless and unlikable nerds, one of whom looks like a reject from the Baja Marimba Band AND Zapata's outlaw band, while the other looks just like an ordinary nerd. I detest movies which utilise the shaky-cam, hand-held "technique". No, it is NOT edgy, avant-garde; the word is that this film was shot using an i-Phone. I detest movies which are shot mainly in near-dark. I detest movies in which the fake blood LOOKS like poor-quality fake blood or ketchup. I detest this movie. Truly, I cannot think of anything positive to say about it; it is an hour and a half of boring, infuriating nonsense, with "actors" who need to go back to their day jobs. There is no suspense, no creativity, no indication of any cinematic talent. Truly, the movie stinks. Out loud.

I'm pretty sure the people who gave this movie high marks either were the actors in it or friends of the director because this only deserves a 4 rating at most, and I was being generous mainly because it reminded me of a haunt I walked through once around Halloween that I kind of liked. I live and breathe horror and am willing to watch anything in the genre. Good or bad, which is pretty obvious considering I sat through this atrocity all the way through. Anyway, here it goes....The acting was overly done and bad. Like REALLY BAD. A lot of yelling, one of the main characters started out super obnoxious and his friend whiny and in the middle they kind of switched roles. But yeah, prepare for TONS of obnoxious and unnecessary yelling and erratic and awkward body motions.The story made absolutely zero sense. I'm all for senseless violence and gore in my horror movie. But it has to at least have SOME kind of structure to keep my attention. All these two were doing were rambling on and on about the whiny guys recent breakup with his girlfriend even when some psycho girl in a bad Halloween mask is trying to stab them to death. It wasn't about "how do we get out of here?" or "How do we kill this chick?". Nope, it was about "why did you let me kiss that girl at the party so my girlfriend could catch me?!" and "I know you wanted to get with my girlfriend that's why you set me up with that girl!" and whawhawha... And it just didn't stop.The psycho girl was probably the most unscary thing about this entire movie. And then after "Peter" killed her he starts rambling on about how his friend was trying to steal his ex girlfriend again in his really bad acting way. And then proceeds to kill him. Afterwards he decides to record a message for "Lisa" (his ex girlfriend) with some nonsense dribble. And then he just puts down the phone and walks away.And the whole movie in it's entirety was shot on an iPhone. So yep... found footage...My opinion, don't waste your time. There's other really bad horror movies out there that are way better than this.

The story is a tightly woven blend of American horrors abroad and urban legend that mixes xenophobia with a baser celebration of the macabre surrounding ghost girl hook-ups that has evolved from the modern urban legend field. Although I wrestled with the film's framing around the found footage style to tell this pretty cool story, I succumbed to the fact that it is that basic irritant I have with pretty much all found footage films-"would, given the circumstances of such a horrific series of events, would a person realistically continue to hold on to the camera to continue videoing the events?" Especially when the story unfolds chronologically without breaks. Aside from the "found footage" issue I have, generally, I enjoyed many aspects of "Hooked Up". I found the acting to be believable, the premise plausible, and the emotion genuine. There are a few moments when the dialog isn't delivered quite as convincingly as I am sure the director and story hopes for, but for the most part the drama, suspense and energy is alive in "Hooked Up". There isn't much lull in the excitement or high drama here, every scene just amplifies the next as far as character drama. It is a cool, thrilling story and even in found footage it unfolds chillingly. The special effects in "Hooked Up" are pretty tight as well, the blood and gore looked realistic enough. The death and violence are visceral and quality. The cinematography ran the expectant gambit of found footage gimmicks, First Person POV, shaky, shadowy scenes, quirky angles and confusing scenes that have obscured views with sudden thrills. Some times it works and sometimes it doesn't. Luckily enough of the scenes work to create the intended nightmare sequences with enough energy to complete the story arc. Overall, "Hooked Up" just passes enough to be a cool Eurotrip horror, but not enough to be a must see. Plus the ending was really hokey and somewhat cliché. For found footage/paranormal fans this is an okay flick, for a wider horror fan base, "Hooked Up" doesn't really offer much that hasn't been seen and done before.