Belated Halloween Review: Area 407

 Area 407

Directed by Dale Fabrigar, Everette Wallin

Starring Abigail Schrader and Samantha Lester

Not Rated (Some violence/disturbing images, strong language)

Happy belated Halloween. It’s already fucking November. Goddamnit. Well, I guess for my inaugural posts on my new film blog (probably the tenth time I’ve tried to start one), I should post about what the majority of a lot of these posts are going to be about- Horror, sci-fi, and geek-related topics. That’s who I am and what I like, so I figure I’ll dive into some recent horror releases on DVD and download.

So, not too long ago I heard of two found-footage dinosaur films. I was aghast. I wanted to make that! There are far too few giant monster movies, let alone ones involving dinosaurs, and found footage can work perfectly for it. One was called “The Dinosaur Project,” an adventure film, and the other was called “Area 407,” a horror film. The latter just came out on DVD a few weeks ago and I was glad to see it.

Area 407 starts out as pretty much every found-footage movie does- a teenager using a video camera way too goddamn much.  15-year-old and (I think) 18-year-old siblings are on a plane to LA when the plane breaks down and crashes in the middle of nowhere. Except it isn’t in the middle of nowhere- it’s in a secret government testing site where Velociraptors…or maybe baby T-Rexes (again, I think, the movie doesn’t identify them) have gotten loose. Cue people getting yanked into darkness and bloody aftermath shots.

This movie is very, VERY low-budget. There’s pretty much only one shot of CGI at the end and most of the prosthetic and puppet effects are obscured by lighting choices. It’s understated, but in a charming way. It’s a hell of a lot better than having it all CGI and showing the monsters the whole movie. That’s where the film is most successful, building tension and keeping you scared. You see what the characters see and it’s totally frightening at times.

Where the movie fails is that, at least in the beginning, the characters are completely, totally, annoying. Indescribably, mind-rapingly annoying. Eventually, though, the characters start to grow on you, and they all have distinct personalities. The shock of everything happening accounts for the occasional poor choice, but generally these characters do their best to survive. The movie gives us an explanation as to why the camera’s are constantly rolling, too, that being that it’s dark and they need the lights on the cameras to see. It robs the film of any kind of social commentary that using found footage provides, but hell, it also prevents the film from getting too fucking preachy like Paranormal Activity, Catfish, and Diary of the Dead did. It’s a wash there.

Part of me wishes that the movie had like, 2-4 million more dollars in the effects budget to give us some really GOOD effects-driven moments like Chronicle had. The film just doesn’t give us enough to look at. It’s mostly just people yelling. It’s somewhat engaging, but there’s nowhere near enough dinosaur in the movie. There’s so little that the characters themselves can’t even tell that there are fucking dinosaurs, they just know it has a tail and teeth. What is there is effective, ut the movie is curtailed by the budget.

The ending is a stock cliché “shock” ending that I could see three miles away. But it was still mildly effective because I had grown used to the characters, with all of their faults and annoyances. Overall, it’s worth a rent, especially if you have Netflix Instant Watch (and at this point, who doesn’t?).

C+