Image Source |
Year: 2019
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 1 hour, 28 minutes
An aspiring photographer is given an old Polaroid camera as a gift, but what she doesn't know is that the camera is haunted, and everyone whose picture gets taken with the camera dies.
Oh, look, someone with a camera! (Image Source) |
Does Generation Z really not know that physical pictures actually take time to develop? Is this knowledge Gen Xers and Millennials simply take for granted? Because it makes us furious if that's the case. "Polaroid" (2019) is the feature film directorial debut of Lars Klevberg, though he has done many short films including "Polaroid" (2015), the short film on which this movie is based. Klevberg also just offered up his sophomore directorial effort in "Child's Play, " the remake of the 80's horror classic of the same name. This story revolves around Bird Fitcher (Kathryn Prescott), an amateur photographer and all-around awkward teenager who gets made fun of a lot and is dubbed "Scarf Girl" by her peers for regularly wearing scarves to school even though it snows where she lives, so scarves seem like totally appropriate attire when it's cold...???? Bird wears them to cover up a scar on her neck, though the neck dressing and the wound play virtually no factor in the overall story other than to give her a traumatic past. Bird works in an antique store where her friend and co-worker gifts her an old Polaroid camera from the '70s. What she doesn't know is that the camera is possessed, and whoever has their picture taken with the camera is killed shortly after. When Bird takes a group photo of her friends Connor (Tyler Young), Devin (Keenan Tracey), Kasey (Samantha Logan), and Mina (Priscilla Quintana) at a costume party, she uncovers the truth about this demonic device and must find a way to stop it before they all die.
Oh, look, two people with a camera! (Image Source) |
"Polaroid" is an insufferably boring, poorly lit, and painfully generic PG-13 horror flick. We're glad to say we missed this movie when it came to theaters because we would have been even angrier if we had been forced to sit through this slog in a cinema. There is absolutely nothing intriguing or remarkable about it in any way, shape, or form. It does nothing to set itself apart from the myriad of other generic horror films just like it as it recycles the same tired horror narrative we've seen thousands of times in the past. Bird, the protagonist, comes into possession of a haunted object, a few people die, she goes on a quest to uncover how to stop said hauntings, fin. Lars Klevberg does zilch to build tension or set a creepy atmosphere, and instead, he relies on the same ol' scary movie tropes and tricks and jump-scares that are less thrilling than a ride through a low rent carnival haunted house. Being that this movie is rated PG-13, most of the deaths are only heard and happen through a cutaway shot, so it can't even fall back on the inclusion of cool looking gore, blood, and guts. Instead, we get a terribly rendered antagonist that looks like something out of a shitty ghost hunters television show. We may have been able to tolerate the 'been there, done that' cliches if the story or the characters had been the least bit compelling, but they are all such one-dimensional, stupid whiners that we couldn't wait to watch them die. We struggled to differentiate between them, and we couldn't even remember their names apart from Bird because what the hell kind of cooky, posh, celebrity-ass name is that? The most glorious conflict Klevberg and writer Blair Butler could think of for this script was to have a protagonist who got into a car accident and got a scar from her injuries, so she's forced to cover it up by wearing a scarf. Oh, and we wonder how long it took them to think up the nickname Scarf Girl, and however long it took, we're sure they patted themselves on the back for thinking of such a *~sharp, edgy, hard-hitting~* insult.
Oh, look, a terribly CGI'ed monster grabbing someone! (Image Source) |
"Polaroid" is a complete and utter waste of time and a total misuse of film. We would have been better off skipping this scareless, tedious, dreadful movie entirely.
BigJ's Rating: 1/10
IMDB's Rating: 5.1/10
RT Rating: ---%
Do we recommend this movie: AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE!!!
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