Turn It Off

Ooh I love those spinny playground things. How did they even find one in this day and age? Here's a playground that needs modernising for the sake of our future generation's safety!

The dialogue takes us back to the time of the Christchurch earthquakes. Intriguing. Few in the audience will know what a toll the earthquakes took on this very house in real life, but this nugget of reality will be used at the end of the film.

This team has really run with the found footage concept. I love the look of the path whizzing past our feet as we run towards the house.

"Heh, the filmmakers have deliberately hidden the fact there's a grand piano in this filmset," I think to myself. Then suddenly we hear the grand piano but we still don't see it. Hilarious. We see a miniature drumkit though.

We see fear in the man's eyes. What can he see that we can't? Suddenly we're running again.

I like the sinister ending.

This film is a nice concept. It comes across quite hectic and meta.

When I saw found footage was a genre I was itching to see a bunch of films like this one. Other teams used different takes on found footage, but I don't care cause this totally scratched that itch. Great performance from our leads (and camera guy). I thought the photo + text ending was really clever too and added to the sinister nature of the conclusion. Very well done

An accurate depiction of a bunch of blokes messing about with a camera in hand, and then stumbling into something they didn’t mean to. Nicely done!

Story-wise, there are two things that pulled us out of it, and it happened every time we watched:

The idea of it being a YouTuber’s prank show didn’t quite land. Ding-dong-ditch is a child’s game, and these fellas don’t really reflect that demographic. Perhaps it would have been a more convincing setup if it was simply the dudes hanging out, not trying to shoot anything in particular, just being assholes and filming it!

The ending should have been the guy saying “Turn it off!” The following text and images were so far removed from what we had just watched. Ending with that shot of the killer's hands would have been a slam dunk! Alas, instead we were tossed this other thing that went on too long, and then the credits were quite long too, so it sorta stumbles to the finish line.

THE BEST THING: A great interpretation of the genre!

THE NEXT THING: We remember Ginger Ninja from last year and thinking you guys are onto something. We reckon your craft is continuing to improve, and as long as you keep thinking about pacing and honing in on the key beats of a story, you’re one to watch! We look forward to seeing your submission next year.