Who was fooled by this?

I was unsure most of the way through - I knew of the toe tag pictures guys (from AU etc.) and have read Carol Clover's book so I had no reason to think any of it wasn't real. I did start to think something was up when he started avoiding JT's questions and talking about how the girls dont know he follows them, yet I wasn't totally sure. The inclusion of the real filmmakers and experts was a great way to throw the viewer off.

Now, obviously I didnt believe that Eric was really doing these things, but if he were in fact a real director it might seem that he was being deliberately evasive or scary in order to enhance his horror 'persona'.

In a way I think that it could almost seem as if Eric was written to be the kind of interesting (psychotic?) person that JT never found for real, so in that respect it can be viewed as a contrivance. If however this film had gone all-out at the end rather than been so subtle, the payoff would have been greater. I think that Eric had stepped outside the realms of total believability anyway (based on his dialogue only - his acting was truly amazing and naturalistic and he basically had to carry the fiction portion of this all by himself - he was literally the ONLY person who had to act and deliver dialogue on-screen) so they should have taken it as far as possible to really bring home the point that this documentary about underground horror had in fact turned into an underground horror film whilst you were watching it.

That said, I thoroughly enjoyed this. Especially the interviews with Fred Vogel and JT was a great 'host'. None of my friends are into this kind of thing which is unfortunate as I would love to show them it. I tried to watch AUM with a friend and he decided to turn it off 10 mins in. I think it probably slighted his opinion of me somewhat!

Also, this is just an opinion. I dont mean to take anything away from this film at all. I am not by any means a critic and I only hope that I ever achieve something as creative and imaginitive as this.



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I wasn't fooled by this. I really liked "Soft for Digging," but maybe this is a movie that just can't please a really jaded person who's seen a lot of "breaking the fourth wall" / "Blair Witch Project" "meta" experiments. And without doubt over whether the S&MAN director is real, there isn't that much interesting about this movie, because it relies so heavily on the audience being disturbed by the potential reality of a serial killer getting away with his crimes in the middle of a documentary. Everything else was just talking heads ruminating about fake snuff movies I would never want to watch.

I just watched it and I was fooled to a certain extent. I believed this was a legit doc and that Eric was a real filmmaker, but I didnt believe he was actually killing people. I assumed that a real killer wouldnt appear on camera and that his evasive attitude was contrived as a marketing ploy. I also believed that the film was edited in a way to increase doubt about the subject.

That being said, I thought the final scene was successful. I have no idea how they were able to get blood to squirt out of that actress's neck like that. Making it subdued increased the realism. If it was an over-the-top gorefest, i would have immediately thought the scene was faked.

Great movie though. It was a great idea, too bad it can't be done again without appearing derivative.

PS: to everyone looking for this film, it will be available on Netflix's live stream on 11/11/10

IT DOESNT MATTER WHAT YOU THINK...






for one i know its fake,for 2 i heard fred vogel on deadpit years ago,for 3 yeah that creepy fat guy was good as the weirdo filmmaker,but no the fact its on netflix tells me theres no way its a snuff film with a real serial killer.im watching right now and im saying to myself i wonder how many people saw this and got "blair witched" by it.it was weird enough that if it had been a real documentary of a real killer,id say yeah it looked like that too.pretty good realistic fake documentary.the throat slash at the end was slick but u can tell the way it moves as one image that its windows movie maker cgi.still not as bad as the killing of the rapist at the end of irreversible.or r bud dwyer blowing his head off on live tv.still creepy though.






spectre can

suck it.

Not fooled, really. But creeped out.

I've seen too many mockumentaries to be fooled. It reminded me of The Last Broadcast, sort of - especially the way it played out in the end.

But I was very creeped out watching this at night, alone. Nearly every individual in the film reminded me of someone or more than 1 person I've known in RL - so I was invested and the ending had me.

This was far better than The Last Broadcast, IMO - for the ending alone. TLB was too over the top.

I was buying Rost as a filmmaker at first, but the notion that his subjects were the least bit unwilling didn't convince me in the slightest - for one thing, lots of the shots in the purported S&Man series obviously had a cameraman (and sound guy, now that I think about it).

I was pretty unsure about the guy, S&Man, he did look creepy how he acted but in a ridiculous way. Thing is there are quite a lot of people in the world who really are like the character he depicts.
So my point is it was well acted (in the way it was supposed to) and I lked it!

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For the first 20-or-so minutes I thought it was real. But after that, the twist and ending was pretty obvious. It was a bit too telephoned in. It was a great effort, especially getting real people and filmmakers for interviews, which lended it credibility, but by the end, I kinda found myself giving up on it.

And FURTHERMORE, this is my signature! SERIOUSLY! Did you think I was still talking about my point?