Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Purely Joyful Movie!

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

I went in expecting some cryptid movie, or at least to see some idiot college kids get ripped apart by some panther with mange. It tries to go in on that premise, but about halfway through switches to a poorly executed "The Most Dangerous Game" "spooky ambiguous killer" type movie. Most everyone save for Vanya is completely useless, at least their panic is believable, I'll give them that much. It goes off on plenty of "mysterious" tangents that don't get solved, or if they did, you'd have to suffer through the movie a second time and wade through so much crap to find the answer it might just be easier to gouge your eyes out and forget you ever wasted your time on this movie. Maybe THAT'S what happened to the little girl's eye, she just couldn't stand the movie anymore.

Wow, so silly. The movie had the feel that the screenplay was being written while filming. That, or the bar napkin with the hastily written words "monster/serial killer?" which served as this movie's script, was not sufficient. It was a tedious story I feel like I've seen a hundred times before, like that bait-and-switch bullsh*t telling me people are going to confront a monster but it turns out to be a dude, cause the film makers are playing with the concept of reality versus myth and blah blah bullsh*t. It's all indicative of movies made by people with zero imagination, just recycled ideas made into a motion picture of equally recycled imagery. This movie would have been better with an actual monster in the plot and zero serial killers, but I assume there were budget constraints.Yawn.

First - and yes THIS IS A SPOILER - the film is a bait and switch. It's not about a killer panther, but a human killer. Thankfully they let you know within the first act, which means some viewers will make the wise choice to put something else on. It would suck if they paid for it and got swindled, but at least they could save themselves some time. I found it on Netflix and, unfortunately, decided to stick with it for the rest of the runtime. Basically the whole thing is annoying characters making infuriatingly stupid decisions over and over. And over. And the events of the last fifteen or so minutes feel like they were drawn out of a hat - just completely random stuff lacking any trace of forethought. So, don't waste your time.

I really enjoyed this film. The story was well realised and the characters, while flawed, were at least so in believable ways. The turning point and resulting revelations came naturally without ever feeling forced or needlessly exaggerated for cinematic effect, yet still offered a number of tense and fearful moments. My friends had some criticisms about the actions of the characters, but in my opinion those were not unreasonable considering the circumstances each were in at the time.While much of the film was shot in night-time forest areas, the cinematography was pleasing and did a good job of saturating the atmosphere with the bleak cold & mist of Exmoor, including some wonderful aerial shots of the location in the early morning