I can't understand at all the bashing of this highly effective and suspenseful roller coaster film! Was the patriarch of all found-footage horrors, The Blair Witch Project, filled with gory or other scary elements other than the situation itself, modest scares but so well put in place that made your skin crawl? Honestly this movie kept me on the verge from scene one all over to the finale, which was not what I expected but sinister in deed. By now, this specific sub-genre can hardly bring something totally original and the best the directors can achieve in continuing to make movies in found footage style is to keep you in suspense by skillfully adding small but effective, less gory scares...keep in mind that what one doesn't see is the perfect reason to keep one's interest at pin point. Seeing stuff you already saw and that gave you a full ride of scares is worth seeing again, differently portioned and dozed by a masterful director. I loved this little underrated gem and I believe it should receive more credit from found footage-horror fans. True followers of The Blair Witch Project will clearly enjoy this helluva ride from start to finish and, folks, sometimes less IS more! My unapologetic rating is 9/10.

Upon finding a video camera on his doorstep, Tom begins filming his family, thinking that the camera is part of a competition that his wife signed up for. A college girl, has also found a camera, giving her something to do other than having late night conversations with her mother. A third camera finds a home in the hands of a social outcast who lives with his mother, and is convinced he'll win $10,000 from the competition.The three 'winners' are all given the same instructions......don't stop filming. Soon enough they start receiving more clues, while one is given a clown outfit and informed to carry out certain tasks. The game begins to take a turn for the worse when they receive what appears to be a snuff movie, advising them not to call the police or stop recording.........It's an interesting premise for sure, but like the directors other movie 'The Strangers', it suffers the same flaw, there is no rationale for the antagonists actions. So we are given three different narratives, and each as predictable as you would think.We get the obligatory house under siege, with the random background inclusions of shadowy figures being there one moment, and then disappearing the next, while all the while the couple are doing the most stupidest acts, like putting in all the lights and hanging around the windows.The second narrative is more interesting, but just as predictable, the social misfit is given a clown costume, and made to do more increasingly random acts, but it gives too much of the game away, this and the DVD cover.And the other narrative features the college girl just blubbering into the camera. The idea of keep filming, or someone will die, could have worked, but when you realise that the cameras cannot be turned off, that factor becomes irrelevant. So we are left with three groups of people doing increasingly sillier acts, before merging into what appears to be a reenactment of Nena's eighties super hit.And as the director gives us a stiff shock with the opening scene, he leaves us scratching our heads thinking 'hold on a minute, what was all that about'.Oh, and it's set in 1995, so mobile phones couldn't be an option.A rubbish film, with a couple good ideas.....

What on earth was the writer thinking? This film really sucks, a minuscule plot. the only saving grace was the acting and also the soundtrack with credit going to the actor who played the clown. This film Should get a Golden Turkey if they still exist. I had heard good things about this and watched the trailer on you tube but boy was I disappointed. I just didn't get it at all and I was left after 80 minutes going WTF have I just wasted my time on. I really wanted to enjoy this but unfortunately it just left me with a very sour taste in my mouth. Avoid at all costs and I hope to god that there isn't a part two of this EVER.

It's funny. I've been on IMDb since 2003 and I haven't written a single review until this one. To be honest with you, I wish I had chosen a better movie to review. Oh, well...Mockingbird is the spiritual sequel to the director's own hit, The Strangers. The plot is quite simple: Four people are given a video-camera and a simple set of instructions, which, of course, turns into a night of terror for everybody involved. The thing with the found-footage movies is that there needs to be a strong reason for all the characters to record everything. REC, Noroi The Curse and Okaruto, the found-footage movies I'd highly recommend to everyone over this one, are a good example of movies that are convincing to the viewers. In Mockingbird, the director Bryan Bertino tries to alleviate this issue by making the cameras impossible to turn off, and also by having them equipped with the receivers which enable the antagonists to see what the main characters are doing. Even with all that, one still cannot shake off the feeling that the characters in this movie would have been better off running the hell out of the house instead of filming everything. The other trouble with the technology in this movie is the following: Bertino set his own movie in 1995, which was a baffling decision since this doesn't have any impact on the plot aside from introducing a huge plot hole - the movie takes course over several hours and the batteries somehow don't run out? And if the movie is set in 1995 and is found-footage, why not film it VHS-style? A huge opportunity missed there. The entire movie is implausible, mostly because the plot depends on the main characters doing stupid things. There is one especially contrived situation involving the clown taking photos of certain two characters which made it really hard to suspend my disbelief. Sadly, it's not the only such scene in the movie.I won't spoil the finale for those who decide to watch the movie, but I'll be shocked if anyone is satisfied with it. It's not only ridiculous, it's downright insulting (for multiple reasons), and therefore doesn't have the impact of the similarly themed The Strangers.Btw, don't believe the highly positive review on Bloody-Disgusting, folks, it's obviously heavily biased. This one is a stinker and I'm not surprised it was shelved for two years before getting a VOD release.The reason why I haven't given the lowest score to this movie is that despite everything, Bertino managed to create a few solid, suspenseful scenes. He clearly has talent for directing and I hope he gets to direct more movies. If only he had written a better script...