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everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

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

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

I was completely fascinated with LARPers after seeing the excellent Darkon. Once I learned that there was another documentary about the subject, I wasted no time tracking it down and watching it. Unfortunately, Monster Camp is inferior to Darkon in every way. Even hardcore fans of documentaries may choose to skip this one.A documentary is only as good as its subject matter, and Monster Camp simply fails in this regard. I'm not a judgmental person. I liked all the colorful people that Darkon focused on. There lives were interesting for the most part, and I empathized or identified to a degree with all of them. For the most part they were normal people. Monster Camp, on the other hand...I hate to say this, but there was very little to like about the participants of Nero Seattle. They weren't endearing or quirky. Mostly, they were just plain weird. The movie makers made no attempt to portray them as three-dimensional individuals. They all came off as losers or super-geeks who had nothing in their lives except their monthly hobby. And I hate to see people depicted in such a negative way. There's no incentive to get emotionally involved in Monster Camp. Darkon was so well made, that everything that was important to its subjects soon became important to the viewer. All I feel after watching Monster Camp is that most of those people would benefit from focusing more of their attention on the real world.In a nutshell, I recommend Darkon to everyone and Monster Camp to no one.

MONSTER CAMP is an honest (if totally detached) attempt to document "the mechanics of making magic happen in the real world." We all live in our own little world(s); some are vacuums. As akin to the nerdlies on THE BIG BANG THEORY as the "outdoorsmen" of The Society For Creative Anachronism, the players in MONSTER CAMP have a flair for fantasy (if I'm not mistaken, I saw several volumes by Terry Brooks on one bookshelf, and I'm sure there must've been some Roger Zelazny somewhere on the premises). Nothing wrong with that. For a decade or so, I headed up a writing group that met one night a week at a local bookstore cum coffee shop. One of three "group novels" we tried to write was a fantasy that featured trolls and shapeshifters and druids. Unfortunately, we weren't all on the same page, so to speak, and the book was never finished. But I may one day finish my own version. There's a lot to be said for finding people of a like mind to pal around with. Hereabouts, they're rare to the point of nonexistence. Fortunately for the gamers in MONSTER CAMP, they can network. More power to them.

So I was also a participant in this documentary when it was shot, and I've played at a few different chapters across the country.Actually, when I saw the film I was surprised at how even-handed it actually was. There's a lot of drama queens that LARP, and there's no way any film made about a NERO chapter would have appealed to all of them. I mean, there's so much drama in the NERO universe that there's controversy over who started NERO in the first place.Some of my family members have watched this movie and now finally have a grasp on what it is I actually do with some of my weekends. More importantly, they came away from the film with a greater sense of understanding.Another NERO member said that the lizard guys in the photo quit shortly after shooting, which is true. To that point, oddball types float in and out of the game all of the time, and they usually play the monsters who don't know the rules well. The film covered the die-hards and the more pathetic participants (even though they really do get a chance to speak for themselves).NERO is a community. It attracts all types. Sure the film doesn't follow the in-game plot; but come on fellow Larpers, that stuff is only interesting to us. This film seems to have been crafted to appeal to people besides just us. It focuses on real drama that comes with trying to make our fantasy work! That's probably why it was more than just another you tube video showing people hitting each other with padded weapons.Of the characters profiled in the film, I knew about 40% of them. While they are more complex than the film reveals, I didn't think that they were misrepresented. I thought it did a better job at providing an even-handed perspective for them than King of Kong did for Billy Mitchell. Additionally, those I have talked to who were in the film by and large were satisfied with how they were portrayed.I'm glad I was documented in this project. If nothing else, I'd say watch it and see for yourself.

This movie really didn't accomplish what it could have accomplished. The last five minutes of this movie were brilliant, but the rest was a bit of a let down. If you are going to make a movie like this you had better either 1) make fun of them, 2) have a heck of a story like in king of kong, or 3) dive into the psychology of these people. Clearly the director was going for number three. Except he only scratched the edges, he was afraid to puncture anything and to find any emotional resonance. These people aren't normal. They're weird, they know it, but they have stories to tell. Why are they doing it? How was high school for them? Do they feel happy with life? Does the fantasy world compensate for the areas in their lives that are so sorely lacking? And what of the future? At the end of the movie we're left with few real authentic answers. And the answers that are given, much like the subjects of the film, are too awkward to carry any real weight.If you want to watch a movie about a weird group of people, start with anything Louis Theroux has ever done or watch a few of Errol Morris' films like The Gates of Heaven or Vernon, Florida. Those movies actually look deeper into humanity rather than just saying, "well, it's a bit weird but hey they make friends so it's OK!" Without ever asking the question, "why couldn't they make these friends on the outside"