Phoenix Forgotten (2017) Reviews

• Hidden gem. Do not overlook or underestimate this movie.

  dnathanr11112017-08-06

  This movie really surprised me honestly. I did not expect at all to like it as much as I did. I'm a huge fan of the found footage genre when done right and it's very hard to find some good ones out there. This movie in particular was hands down my favorite "indie", as you can all it, found footage movie. From the beginning there's already a sense of suspense to it and mystery behind what happened to the missing trio. It's kinda obvious based off of the type of movie this is that they are abducted, but what leads up to it is very interesting. A slow burner for sure, not much interesting happens until the last 30 minutes but before that is a very well crafted backstory and "mockumentary" style movie. They go in depth of the backstory of each of the kids and the protagonist of the movie is on a constant search for not only her missing brother but the other 2 that he brought along with him. Being an AZ native I was very surprised at how realistic this movie is and really, even if you're not from there, this movie is VERY realistic. The acting seems real, the way it's filmed feel very 90's, and the actual events aren't your usual CGI and jumpscare filled horror. There's a lot of suspense and mystery behind what actually happened. This movie I would recommend to anyone with a willing eye, or just anyone in general.

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• Could have been better if it knew what it was

  mancinibrown2017-10-30

  Phoenix Forgotten portrays itself as a movie about the sister of a teen who went missing after the phoenix lights incident in 1997. If you're not familiar with the phoenix lights, a bunch of strange lights appeared over Phoenix, then disappeared and was then never explained. Sophie Bishop, 20 years after her brother went missing, decides to shoot a documentary about what happened, and try and discover the truth. That sums up the first 2/3 of the movie and involves interviews with her family, plus footage shot by Josh (who was, of course, a camera geek and budding movie director). Caught halfway between this fake documentary and found footage movie, Phoenix Forgotten never really gets off the ground. There is some groundwork laid for the final act of the movie, but mostly the first couple acts are forgettable. The third act is where the movie really takes off, as the director fully embraces the found footage genre, and succeeds. The camera actually makes sense that it would be filmed, and the actions seem very believable. The main problem with the end of the movie is how the movie just ends. Don't expect any explanation of what was just witnessed or what it means. Is it human, alien, or other? That's up for the interpretation of the viewer and leaves the film weaker off. The other issue with the ending of the movie is it totally drops Sophie's documentary. While this works better for the pacing of the movie being watched, it's odd that a thread played out for so long is just dropped. In the end, viewers who enjoy the found footage genre should find something enjoyable here. But the dropped threads, questionable first hour, and ambiguous ending hurt the film.

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• A LOT better than I expected from reviews on here

  english_artist2017-08-21

  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

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• Think that Blair Witch was too exciting? Then this is for you.

  QuintLives2017-04-27

  What the hell is Phoenix Forgotten, you ask? Well, dear reader, that is a great question. I had never heard of this movie until it appeared on the release schedule a couple of weeks ago. I never saw a single trailer or commercial for it. It features a cast of unknowns, is from a first-time director (Justin Barber) and was even released from a first-time distributor (Cinelou Films). Yet somehow, this pile of nonsense was given a nationwide theatrical release and, according to the arbitrary rules that I've established for myself, that means that I have to be the one person that goes to see it. You're welcome. Phoenix Forgotten is a found-footage movie inspired by the real-life sighting of a UFO flying over Phoenix in 1997. Following the sighting, three teenagers suspect that something strange is afoot, so they grab some hand-held cameras and head into the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland to investig-……sorry, wrong movie. They grab some cameras and head into the desert to investigate. After wandering around for an eternity or so, they start to see and hear strange things, they get lost, their compass stops working and they start to realize that there really is a witch in the woo-…. sorry, wrong movie again. They start to realize that there really are aliens in the desert. This footage is mixed with documentary footage, set in the present day, of the sister of one of the kids trying to investigate their disappearance. The sister's story literally goes nowhere; the movie doesn't even return to her after the 1997 footage ends. I'm not a betting man, but I would wager that the original intent was for the footage of the three kids to be the entire movie and the filmmakers added the sister when they realized they didn't have enough material for a feature-length movie. Nothing happens in this movie. Nothing. I mentioned that the sister's entire subplot is just filler to pad the running time, but not a damn thing happens for most of the 1997 footage either. It's like your most boring friends are forcing you to watch home videos of a hiking trip that they took, but the sadistic bastards rented a movie theater for the ordeal. As a found footage movie, we know how this is going to end. It will end the same way all these goddamn things end. The camera will get real shaky, there will be some loud noises, the camera will fall to the ground and text will appear saying that the characters were never seen again. I spent what felt like an eternity watching these jackwagons wander around the desert waiting for an ending that is more inevitable than the last act of Titanic. I checked the running time as I left the theater and couldn't believe that it is only 87 minutes. I thought I was in there for hours. I expected the sun to be rising and giving me the finger as it rose above the horizon. But, no. Time just stood still for me as I experienced the horror of sitting through this. This movie feels like a film student's senior thesis that was accidentally released to theaters. When this is available on demand/Netflix (which should be in a few hours or so), I challenge you to lay down, put this on and try to make it to the end of the movie without falling asleep. There are no other rules to this game. You can make a pot of coffee using Red Bull instead of water and substitute cocaine for sugar if you want. I bet that you will still fail. If you succeed, your reward will be losing 87 minutes of your life that you will never get back. Good luck!

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• better than you'd expect, though not without problems of its own

  Quinoa19842017-04-25

  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.

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