2/2
Cons:
* Reese is kind of a douchebag in this cut than the theatrical. Admittedly, the reshoots of him and Pfeifer in the theatrical cut having more dialogue with her flesh him out a bit more and make him likable.
* There is an opening and ending sequence involving police watching the footage. However, these segments are riddled with mistakes. The main characters died in the early hours of October 29, 2008. Yet the footage of the police watching the teenagers is marked as September 8, 2008. Also, the police act like it's early morning, yet the time on the camera shows it to be around 15 minutes after midnight. Also, in the time it took the police to watch a video compiled of all of the footage that occurred in the high school, which is one plus hour of footage compiled from what appears to be almost a four hour event, little less than 4 MINUTES have passed in the police room from the beginning to the end of the movie.
Overall, though, this original version, while having some of the same faults as the theatrical cut, is a MAJOR improvement over what the theatrical cut was. The theatrical cut has some footage of the original version edited in, and it is JARRING when you notice the differences in camera qualities. It makes me wonder why they wouldn't stick to the cheaper camera. If you want to make a found footage movie, understand your film will be more believable if your camera quality is low and it feels less Hollywood-ized.
What's even more annoying is a special feature on the blu-ray in which Jason Blum talks to the writing/directing duo behind the film, and it's obvious they're playing kiss ass with him to not only inspire other independent filmmakers to possibly work with Blumhouse, but to make it seem like these two are successful now, despite them not having worked on a new project in the past few years. If anything, Blumhouse's changes to the film probably killed the duo's chances at making it big.
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