Dooms Chapel Horror / The Hunt dual review

The short film 'The Hunt' was a short found footage film that eventually Digivolved into the one and a half film that we'll be talking about shortly, the Dooms Chapel Horror. This film enthusiast named Steven gives exposition as to how a number of cows ended being being killed in this local town, then people started to go missing, most turning up torn apart. Steven goes to the police hall where the Sheriff has gathered a ton of hunters together to go find whatever's been attacking their people and go blow its head up. Steven runs into his friend Dennie, hoping to get the event on tape.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTTJQs2f2Uo

The hunting team gatheres around a fire as the Sheriff gives his last instructions. The Pastor asks to deliver a prayer. As he finishes his prayer, the creature makes its presence known with an inhuman screech. Sufficed to say, I do not envy these hunters.

Steven documents the trek with night vision  as the hunters split up and look for clues, unbeknownst to them, there's more than one monster. Seems like out of all the details to miss, that'd be the worst one. Eventually, the monsters make their move, and Steven is dragged, for about a full minute at high speed. The scene is so good, they recycle it for Dooms Chapel Horror...more on that later.

Steven tries to get to his camera but the beast pins him down. We only see its foot and teeth as the camera cuts out.

It's short but it hits hard. It is an excellent little found footage film, worthy of praise. Dooms...I'm not so sure.

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The movie starts off with a clip show of home movies from the Cole family. We see our rather bland hero, Kyle Cole, watches the video he accidentally films his brother's death. The entire town blames the death of his brother, the town's hero, on a young Kyle, which weighs on his soul for a decade.

Kyle returns to his hometown with his 'faces-turns-heel' girlfriend, Mandy, and documentary filmmaker slash creeper Tanner and that's where the problems start...this film can't decide what perspective it wants to be in, one minute it's in a first person perspective, you know, like a found footage movie and then...you see the cameraman in the shot. One minute, it's a documentary format, and another, it's a scene where there clearly is no cameraman whatsoever who could have gotten these shots, like in the final moments of the film. More on that later...


The acting is all over the place. The villains are consistently praised in this film for their intense acting, very Bray Wyatt-esque if Bray Wyatt was actually scary. The Sheriff also delivers a completely believable

Imagine if, in Cloverfield, we had gotten a view where we could see directly behind Hud while he continues to film. Or if in the Blair Witch. Wouldn't that have been jarring? Wouldn't that make you question just what the heck is going on?  Chronicle had various sources strung together to make its film, similar to this film, and yeah, it made me wonder just who the heck put all this footage together with music, but it never took me out of the movie experience like with Dooms.

Oh, the monster.

Yeah.

It's a blur.

No. Seriously.

It's a blur.

A literal blur.

You see bits and pieces of it, it's claws in one clear scene, its bloody maw chewing up hunters in another. But it's soooooooooo quick and blurry, it just got more annoying than anything. You can't tell what's going on until the monster spits out its victims! There is one line during the Director and Crew commentary that really got under my skin - "We could have done the movie without the monster." Considering there's about five seconds when you can see it, albeit still blurry, I have to say, the Horror itself might as well not be there. (Off-topic, when recording a commentary for a movie, lower the movie's audio!!

And the irony is that there was a trailer at one point for the movie where the monster is EASILY seen. And they took it down! Even better, you can see a clearer view of parts of the monster on the official Dooms Chapel Horror Facebook page! It even has the signature sigil on it!  I have to wonder, just what happened? The whole point of a monster movie is to show a monster! Oh, and my personal favorite, one of the promotional posters has the monster's face right on it, in all its misshapen glory. I realize that budget constraints probably played a role in all this but don't promise me a monster and then show me blurs!

Oh, and the monster is Cthulhu-inspired. Yeah.

I had high hopes for this film. There's a lot of good ideas here! Things that could transmute into a sequel,  if there was interest. I can't say I have any.

If you want to watch the film, buy it second hand.