Tape 407 - Not as bad as it's made out

I've read some pretty scathing reviews about Tape 407, so I naturally didn't have many hopes for it. Plus I'm getting as sick as most horror fans about the amount of `found footage' films that are being churned out. This is one of those `Blair Witch' movies filmed from a single camera all the way where you constantly shout at the screen "Why are you actually filming all this?" We know the `first person' gimmick is just a way of filming on the cheap, but, if you can get over that here, it's not quite as bad as people are making out. Not quite.

Perhaps one mistake was making the camera-person a sixteen-year-old American girl from L.A. She does tend to shriek quite a bit. However, her shrieking is soon drd out by everyone else. The plane she's on crashes in the middle of an American military testing base/desert and the survivors end up getting stalked by a load of monsters.

The film also leaves you a bit shaken due to the excessive shaky camerawork to go with the shrieking. All in all, it's a tough watch, but it's not all bad. Some of the characters are actually quite fun to watch - the air hostess is believable and passenger `Charlie' is wonderfully annoying, making you just want to strangle him.

However, and I hope this doesn't count as a spoiler, the opening test card to the film tells you that this footage is `found' therefore you don't have to be a genius to guess the ending. The ending. The ending has left a lot of people cheesed off. Anyone who was enjoying it up until the end feels like the film-makers used one too many clichés to be believable.

Yes, for all its - many - flaws, I did sit through it and feel I didn't entirely waste an hour of my life.

I can't bring myself to recommend it, as it's clear that the majority of people didn't. However, I think there will be a few people out there - like me - who at least saw SOME good in it.

6/10 May just keep you awake if Freddy Krueger was haunting your nights