Watch The Tapes For Free

hyped garbage

good back-story, and good acting

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

I quite like the found footage sub-genre, and I like Britissh horror generally, so this held some promise for me. What a let down. Unfortnunately, the film simply fails on most levels. I've seen my share of bad horror (in fact I've seen three other terrible horror films this evening), but rarely have I seen a film that sets out with clear, easily attainable objectives and yet manages to miss every mark. Firstly, that pacing is flawed. I see what they were going for. I'm all for building character, having 'nothing happen' so that when something happens it is creepy and impactful. However, not only is there no ominous atmosphere, there is little in the way of characterisation. The protagonists we an amalgam of stereotyped traits: clearly the screenwriter saw some of Noel Clarke's films and added as many slang terms as they could in order to make the "kids" seem "real": the result is as stilted and distancing as it sounds. Part of the problem is that the actors themselves either didn't believe in the material (who could blame them) or are just not very good. Wooden, unconvincing and entirely lacking chemistry. Regardless of how one feels about Blair Witch, one of the the reasons that film became so iconic was because the actors did a great job. The context (three actors, two camcorders, no special effects, natural light/sound) means all that is left is the interactions - without actors that can carry the material, the film is doomed from the outset. The director's misunderstanding of the material and context is underscored by the "subliminal" foreshadowing insert shots throughout: these are badly edited, being on screen for the wrong amount of time - like a joke, timing is everything in these cases. Shorter or longer would have worked better, but the length and frequency renders them ineffective. Moreover, it would work if they were naturalised by the camcorder context, but the filmmakers fail to integrate them into the 'found footage' in a naturalistic way (say what you will about August Underground, but that form of editing is something Vogel manages to to extremely well). All in all, considering the film is constituted by a bunch of clichés, i am shocked that it didn't manage to be effective at some point or other, but somehow it did. My advice is to avoid this, and watch just about anything else instead

"The Tapes" begins slowly...and proceeds at a slow pace...and remains in first gear for roughly the first hour until things start to happen in the last twenty minutes or so. And much of what does finally happen happens in near-total darkness. It's the film's boringness and lack of interest and action, primarily, that makes it such an unrewarding watch and impossible to recommend.I say 'primarily' because there's also the whole hand-held camera thing. And there's also the fact that the main characters are such annoying w***ers that it's a real ordeal trying to stay the distance.About this last point first. The evening prior to watching "The Tapes" I happened to watch Barbet Schroeder's "More" (1969) (featuring a Pink Floyd soundtrack, incidentally). The most irritating thing about watching "More" was that the male lead was the most obnoxious a**hole I'd encountered in quite a while. It really made the film hard to persist with and near impossible to care about his fate. Then, the very next day, I was treated to this trio of d***s. Do film-makers not realize that their audiences have to 'hang out', so to speak, with their characters for about an hour and a half and, as with real life, if they're too annoying, too whiny, too much like complete f***-heads, you'll soon want to get the heck out of there! I understand if it's the point of the film or if the annoying ones get killed off in gloriously brutal manner, drawing a cheer from the audience, but to have us sit with them till the end is just trying our patience! There have been plenty of these hand-held, home video type films recently. I've enjoyed some but, as with most fads, if the gimmick's over-done it soon becomes tiresome. I feel there are actually two closely related sub-genres at work here. One is the 'found footage' premise. "The Tapes" makes a half-hearted nod in that direction. As does "Gacy House". "The Poughkeepsie Tapes" is a more concerted example. (Both are terrible films, by the way.) I believe Ruggero Deodato's "Cannibal Holocaust" is the progenitor of the conceit, while "The Blair Witch Project" brought it into current favor. The other sub-genre is the actual hand-held 'video style'. Perhaps Michael Powell's controversial "Peeping Tom" (1960) is the distant relative here. There have been plenty of examples of this style over the last few years: "Rec.", "Cloverfield", and the "Paranormal Activity" films (though these last feature CCTV rather than hand-held video) to name but a few.These two sub-genres tend to co-mingle often. One of the flaws in "The Tapes" is it belongs to the latter group but makes a half-cocked attempt to play into the former. At the very beginning a police officer tells us about the tapes and a little later a brother of one of the soon-to-be victims has his say too. But as the film goes on these elements are forgotten and the film plays out (in darkness!) as a hand-held video (notwithstanding the on-screen text at the very end). And of course, if you don't like the jumpy, jerky hand-held style, as many don't, this will annoy also.This review is getting out of hand! I was struck to say something about the connection with the idea of a 'snuff' film that comes with these video style hybrids, but I'll save that for another day.In short, this film attempts to cash in on the hand-held video and found-footage fads that are current at the moment. It fails at being a convincing example of the latter and ends up being just another run-of-the-mill example of the former. For horror fans, it's the sheer boringness of "The Tapes" and the almost complete lack of either gore or scares that will render it entirely dismissible. The 'chav' characters (for 'chav', see Wikipedia) are the 'icing on the cake' that make the film entirely unpalatable. I gave it 2/10 as I tend to reserve a score of 1 for Ulli Lommel films. But 0 or 1 would actually be appropriate scores for this rubbish. Even the fairly decent acting, which, in fairness it kind of is, isn't enough to save this drivel. Hopefully the next would-be film-maker with a lame-o idea for a film will spare us the hand-held found-footage melange and do something less passé. Please!

I saw the trailer on youtube and thought WOW this looks right up my alley! Sorry to say that the trailer contained ALL the best bits. Although the story is good it is let down badly by the poor acting, especially Maza who seems to be doing a Danny Dyer impression throughout the film. As the film is short (75 minutes) I thought it would get to the scary part pretty quickly but you will have to sit through 58 minutes of Scott Bates' cringe worthy script before anything nasty happens. Many youtubers compared it to Blair Witch but I wouldn't. The Blair Witch Project is a masterpiece compared with this weak effort.It is not the least bit disturbing because the characters are such idiots you don't really care what happens to them. Its also not jumpy, scary or gory. A complete waste of time.I really hope that countries outside of the UK are not put off by this boring film because us English are very capable of making truly awesome horror films like Eden Lake to name one!

I actually had high hopes for this film, especially as it was British and gave us an automatic connection to our very own BB. The characters were introduced well and although it was extremely slow you still felt the need to persevere and find out what was going to happen. The clues as to the real goings on at the farm were introduced well, although it was blatantly obvious it wasn't a haven for Friday night Swinger parties from the get-go and I actually felt sorry for people from the characters' hometown as it didn't really glorify their intellect. If anything it disrespected it!(Unless of course that was intended, which i doubt!) The acting was actually very believable in my opinion, yet the real let down was at the very end of the movie when spelling Beelzebub as Belzeebub was the first no-no, swiftly followed by 'No members of the Brotherhood of Belzeebub have yet to be traced'. Now correct me if i'm wrong but doesn't that mean they HAVE been traced!!! All in all, If you want to see a whining Davina McCall lookalike for an hour and a quarter then enjoy. If you like a on the edge of your seat movie then avoid at all costs! ( 10 out of 10 for the acting though, as it really was credible.)