Phoenix Forgotten

source: Phoenix Forgotten

Normally I'm leery of found footage movies, and I probably wouldn't have paid to see this one if I wasn't aware of who was on the production team. The storyline was quite good -- light years ahead of most found footage flicks. Pretty believable, not at all contrived. The dialogue seemed pretty natural. Overall, very well-written with some fine young actors.

I loved everything about 'Phoenix Forgotten'. I loved the structuring of the story, intertwining 'found-footage' with 'mockumentary' and using them to not only elongate the film, but also to show other sides of the story and add to the mystery in that way. I loved the way the story found fiction amongst a real-life event. I loved the story itself and the fascinating way it was told. I loved the performances. I loved the visuals. Put simply, I loved this movie. I found myself absolutely entranced by it. It isn't a film that sets out to scare you (it might do that, but it isn't exactly its motive for existing), instead it tries to captivate you and make you care. It pulls this off incredibly well. And when I say it doesn't set out to scare you, I simply mean that there aren't jump-scares around every corner and the horror side of things isn't as obvious as it is in a lot of modern films. The final half hour or so of the film will have a tremendous impact on a lot of people though. As far as flaws go, they're pretty hard to come by. I will be fascinated to read some negative reviews on this film and see just what exactly people didn't enjoy about it. I'm almost certain I'm going to disagree with the majority of their points. 'Phoenix Forgotten' is a brilliant, fresh and original film that is not to be missed.

20 years after three teenagers disappeared in the wake of mysterious lights appearing above Phoenix, Arizona, unseen footage from that night has been discovered, chronicling the final hours of their fateful expedition. Really? another "shaky cam to hide bad effects" piece of garbage. Am I the only one tired of the shaky cams movies??

Somehow... I'm pretty sure there was more found footage in the trailer than there was in the actual movie. I've never seen a "Found Footage" film take so long to get to the found footage. All the scenes from the trailer were taken from the last 15 minutes of the movie... so I feel like they advertised this movie as something it wasn't. I was expecting to see footage of 3 kids lost in the desert but it took the film a whole hour to get to that point. And when it got there it wasn't even good... let alone scary... unless of course you're scared of heavy winds, flashing lights, sand, and falling rocks. The premise (even though it was a blatant Blair Witch ripoff) STILL had potential though. To take that long to get to the good part then RUSH the potential good part! What were they thinking?! Don't bother... this wasn't good at all. I give it a 2 for having real footage of the governor of Arizona in it... but that's it. Full commentary WITH spoilers on YouTube/Twitter @moviebuffchick1 https://youtu.be/nWnkj-tlL5U

The acting was natural. The story is interesting (the three kids going missing aside, it's based on a true story. The Phoenix Lights really did happen and are well documented) and up until some special effects at the end, pretty convincing. I think this is one of very few found-footage films that felt like a "real" documentary to me. If I didn't know better, I'd believe that it was truly filmed in the late 90's. It's a pretty fun film if you've got the free time. It's no masterpiece but it's good!

The movie is about a woman who does a documentary on the disappearance of her brother and his two friends that happen back in 97. The Hi-8 footage used to compose those scenes from 20 years ago makes the movie seem like a throwback of the Blair Witch Project (Which I think was shot on 35mm, actually). It's almost a found footage movie within a found footage movie as this documentary filmmaker goes back over the case of her missing brother interviewing family and friends of all three as well as the police department, trying to find something that was possibly missed 2 decades ago. Then she would go through her brother's old Hi- 8 footage that tells the story of what happen up to the part where three teens (Oh! just like in the Blair Witch Project) went missing, while investigate a series of lights that appeared in the sky at the time that had no origin. Honestly, the movie really takes a while for the story to get jumping. The documentary made on the missing kids is not that interesting yet effective in setting up the Hi-8 footage of the three missing kids. Getting to know these kids is actually not as interesting as watching that last 20-30minutes when the film indeed becomes like the Blair Witch Project. I did really like what they did for the Hi-8 footage, not only a real throwback to the 90s in look and feel but the camera work in itself was actually really good (And it has to be because you can see the obvious change in quality from Hi-8 analog to the digital format we are doing today.) So overall, the movie takes a long and sometimes dull time to get to the fun stuff, but I would say it leaves me (just) satisfied once they get there. http://cinemagardens.com

Just goes to show what is someones trash is someones treasure and looking at reviews on here I nearly did not bother watching this and that would have been a shame as its a good movie and certainly as good as any other found footage movie out there and better than a lot of them to. I started to watch this with a finger close to the stop button on the remote but I never stopped it. In fact I was riveted from beginning to end. I loved the way they blended real events and news reports with the fiction parts of the story which really grabbed you and the lead in with all the footage of the kids messing around made you want to watch until the end to see what happens. Don't always believe the reviews on here and watch this movie you might be very surprised.... I was

I'm not sure if Phoenix Forgotten marks, much more than even last year's "soft reboot/sequel" of Blair Witch, the "found footage" sub-type or genre of horror, the full circle of what it's been all about. The funny thing is that this is not entirely even found footage; it is actually, to go back further, indebted too to what Blair Witch was itself doing an homage to, Cannibal Holocaust, though that didn't pretend to be the documentary that this does. While we do get to see some of the footage shot in 1997 by the main woman's older brother sporadically in the first two thirds, we don't get the full, unfiltered "found" part of it until the last twenty minutes. And, whether it's because a lot has been built up beforehand with the characters, it's the best part of the movie. I should note that this first two-thirds feels longer because some of the character build up is of the stock kind; the acting isn't that bad, certainly considering the low budget, but this all seems to go on for a long while. It almost puts the director Justin Barber into an uncomfortable position: he has to really have something that pays off for our patience, or else we're going to be quite mad (there was a large family sitting near me which had such an inclination at the end of the film, with one exclaiming, and I quote, "That s*** was ass!") Thankfully, it pays off just enough to be passable. Could it have been more, or a little less predictable? Of course, it almost always can be. I do have to stress that this is probably a better movie than you're expecting while, simultaneously, being reasonable enough for a rental or even a Netflix viewing - not so much for a movie theater screen where, indeed, much of what we see isn't so cinematic as to warrant a giant screen experience. What stands out is that the performances are by people who are trying (and the writing is trying for them too, at least up to a point, the actress, Chelsea Lopez I think, on the poster is the example of that), and the director and his team make some clever motions to bringing alien invasion into the found-footage horror style. So the special effects are all seamlessly done in the frame of what *is* a shot-on-90's-consumer-grade camcorder. There isn't anything in the present day, so everything in the past has to work. As far as capturing that rough-edged 90's approach technically speaking, and getting us to believe it, they do a competent job. If anything if the whole movie had been *more* in the 90's style - say, if they found rolls and rolls of tapes and that's all they had to go on, no present-day interviews with boiler-plate answers from the parents and experts and journalists - it'd be even more appealing.

This was, hands down, the worst "movie" I have ever seen. I was actually car sick before the end of it. The effect that the constant motion of the hand held camera created made me nauseated and gave me a slight headache, as though I had just stepped off an amusement park ride. Sure, it lent authenticity to the project ( i cant call it a true film), but enough is enough! That was overdone. That being said, I still could not suspend disbelief. It was what it was- a few high school kids out on a lark. Period. If it were based on a true story, it found the wrong arena to present it's case. It should've stayed on the billboard shown in the project. A movie theater was no place for this haphazard attempt at finding the missing kids. This was a waste of time we can't get back, not to mention not being worth the cost of admission.