User Reviews

"The Tapes" begins slowly...and proceeds at a slow pace...and remains in first gear for roughly the first hour until things start to happen in the last twenty minutes or so. And much of what does finally happen happens in near-total darkness. It's the film's boringness and lack of interest and action, primarily, that makes it such an unrewarding watch and impossible to recommend.

I say 'primarily' because there's also the whole hand-held camera thing. And there's also the fact that the main characters are such annoying w***ers that it's a real ordeal trying to stay the distance.

About this last point first. The evening prior to watching "The Tapes" I happened to watch Barbet Schroeder's "More" (1969) (featuring a Pink Floyd soundtrack, incidentally). The most irritating thing about watching "More" was that the male lead was the most obnoxious a**hole I'd encountered in quite a while. It really made the film hard to persist with and near impossible to care about his fate. Then, the very next day, I was treated to this trio of d***s. Do film-makers not realize that their audiences have to 'hang out', so to speak, with their characters for about an hour and a half and, as with real life, if they're too annoying, too whiny, too much like complete f***-heads, you'll soon want to get the heck out of there! I understand if it's the point of the film or if the annoying ones get killed off in gloriously brutal manner, drawing a cheer from the audience, but to have us sit with them till the end is just trying our patience!

There have been plenty of these hand-held, home video type films recently. I've enjoyed some but, as with most fads, if the gimmick's over-done it soon becomes tiresome. I feel there are actually two closely related sub-genres at work here. One is the 'found footage' premise. "The Tapes" makes a half-hearted nod in that direction. As does "Gacy House". "The Poughkeepsie Tapes" is a more concerted example. (Both are terrible films, by the way.) I believe Ruggero Deodato's "Cannibal Holocaust" is the progenitor of the conceit, while "The Blair Witch Project" brought it into current favor. The other sub-genre is the actual hand-held 'video style'. Perhaps Michael Powell's controversial "Peeping Tom" (1960) is the distant relative here. There have been plenty of examples of this style over the last few years: "Rec.", "Cloverfield", and the "Paranormal Activity" films (though these last feature CCTV rather than hand-held video) to name but a few.

These two sub-genres tend to co-mingle often. One of the flaws in "The Tapes" is it belongs to the latter group but makes a half-cocked attempt to play into the former. At the very beginning a police officer tells us about the tapes and a little later a brother of one of the soon-to-be victims has his say too. But as the film goes on these elements are forgotten and the film plays out (in darkness!) as a hand-held video (notwithstanding the on-screen text at the very end). And of course, if you don't like the jumpy, jerky hand-held style, as many don't, this will annoy also.

This review is getting out of hand! I was struck to say something about the connection with the idea of a 'snuff' film that comes with these video style hybrids, but I'll save that for another day.

In short, this film attempts to cash in on the hand-held video and found-footage fads that are current at the moment. It fails at being a convincing example of the latter and ends up being just another run-of-the-mill example of the former. For horror fans, it's the sheer boringness of "The Tapes" and the almost complete lack of either gore or scares that will render it entirely dismissible. The 'chav' characters (for 'chav', see Wikipedia) are the 'icing on the cake' that make the film entirely unpalatable. I gave it 2/10 as I tend to reserve a score of 1 for Ulli Lommel films. But 0 or 1 would actually be appropriate scores for this rubbish. Even the fairly decent acting, which, in fairness it kind of is, isn't enough to save this drivel. Hopefully the next would-be film-maker with a lame-o idea for a film will spare us the hand-held found-footage melange and do something less passé. Please!

A story about three tarot cards. The magician, the star and the fool. Let me start off by saying I'm a hardcore horror movie fanatic in my 40's, I've seen them all kiddies. I was looking forward to seeing this, I've heard it was 'shaky cam' 'blair witch' 'paranormal activity' with some satanic cult stuff thrown in. Man was I disappointed. This is the 'debut feature from director Lee Alliston and Scott Bates' written by Scott Bates Look at it this way, if you were given an opportunity to create a horror film. would you not go all out and do something truly amazing that would literally turn the genre upside-down. I mean something that people would be talking about for years to come and still get shivers. I can not understand why or how people get such an incredible opportunity... and this is the best script they can write. This movie is absolute garbage. CONTAINS SPOILERS About an hour of absolute nothing, then the final 17 minutes of 'shaky cam' running about. 2 people get stabbed 'off camera' (of course) END OF SPOILERS This movie even had a 'devil worship adviser' listed in the final credits, well he forgot to tell them the correct spelling of Belzeebob among just about anything else of any importance whatsoever pertaining to 'devil worship' The creepiest thing about this movie is the insane clown posse scarecrow in the trailer, and the fact I just spent 77 minutes of my life on this.

I actually had high hopes for this film, especially as it was British and gave us an automatic connection to our very own BB. The characters were introduced well and although it was extremely slow you still felt the need to persevere and find out what was going to happen. The clues as to the real goings on at the farm were introduced well, although it was blatantly obvious it wasn't a haven for Friday night Swinger parties from the get-go and I actually felt sorry for people from the characters' hometown as it didn't really glorify their intellect. If anything it disrespected it!(Unless of course that was intended, which i doubt!) The acting was actually very believable in my opinion, yet the real let down was at the very end of the movie when spelling Beelzebub as Belzeebub was the first no-no, swiftly followed by 'No members of the Brotherhood of Belzeebub have yet to be traced'. Now correct me if i'm wrong but doesn't that mean they HAVE been traced!!! All in all, If you want to see a whining Davina McCall lookalike for an hour and a quarter then enjoy. If you like a on the edge of your seat movie then avoid at all costs! ( 10 out of 10 for the acting though, as it really was credible.)

There are mild spoilers here...

As I browsed the DVD section of my local supermarket this morning, I was surprised to see a film called The Tapes. I scooped it up and paid for it... as you do.

The film tells us that three people, Gemma, Nathan and Danny, have come to sticky ends, leaving only some video tapes behind, and that some sort of cult is responsible. We see a police detective and various family members and we're told that the families have allowed 'the tapes' to be shown. Gemma is a Big Brother hopeful and talks Danny and Nathan into filming a showreel to help her get on the show. Danny is her boyfriend. God knows what she sees in him, because he's a complete prat. Nathan is clearly the strongest, most grounded member of the group.

They hear about 'swingers parties' that take place at a nearby farm and decide that it would be a good subject for Gemma's showreel. They break into the farm and wait for the 'swingers' to turn up. Unfortunately, these people are devil worshippers. You can guess what happens.

While The Tapes passed some time, it is, to be honest, a bit dull. For the vast majority of the film, we're watching Danny being an idiot, Gemma being an Essex Girl wannabe and Nathan losing his temper at Danny's antics. When the action kicks in, it's over in a flash and we mostly get shots where it's way too dark to see anything or we just see footage of the ground as our 'heroes' are legging it. But it isn't terrible. The characters are actually quite likable - except for Danny - and you don't really want to see them come to harm. I'll recommend The Tapes only because it's a cheap buy from your local Asda!

I watch every horror movie that I can get my hands on. I have seen good and bad, but I have never seen a movie as annoying as this one.

First off the characters make way too much noise. How they didn't get caught a lot earlier...? The voices and dialogue of these actors is by far the the most annoying part. I found myself wishing they would just hurry up and die. The girl was the worst, hardest to take off them all. If you are trying to run away and hide, do you constantly make noise? The devil worshippers would have had to be deaf not to found them earlier.

Watch if you are very patient, or if you just love to be annoyed. so bad. At the end I wanted to kill that girl myself. I gave this movie a 3 solely out of mercy.

I'd say this was a pretty good film to be honest, not the best of course but good overall. Funny/annoying at the start & grim/scary at the end as to what happens to them! It brings a good build up as to what happens to them.

The only thing that I didn't like was when they said it was real & several things didn't add up which contradicted this line totally. Such as follows:

If this was real there wouldn't be any footage at all. The worshippers would have taken the footage with them so no evidence wasn't left behind & when the said "The Brotherhood have yet to be traced" how can this make any sense when finger prints could be found on the cameras of the so called footage which they the so carelessly left behind? It don't add up!!!

"The parents have given their consent to show you what happen" Now we all know if your son/daughter was killed & brutally slaughtered in the footage (even if it was off screen) then you wouldn't want anybody else to see! Nor would you want it to be on DVD for peoples enjoyment as they wouldn't allow it.

Lastly why would they have actors names at the top if it were real! They wouldn't give their names away either! So it's all made out to be real.

It was good but thew whole "this is real" just contradicted the whole film!

Well what can I say i'm one of those hardcore found-footage hounds and I wanna devote my time in reviewing films when I go to college.

Let's start by having our three main protagonists of the movie: Nathan, his girlfriend Gemma, and his best friend Danny. They all wanna have a good time and they've told that in some area there's a local swingers party (kinki). For being so ignorant the three trespass and what though was to be a swingers party is a night of survival for three as they try to escape the grasp of a satanic cult known as Beelsebub. And they're all sacrificed as a blessing to Satan.

My god the movie was good. But the majority of the play length is filled with long dialog but they somehow saved up the scary and intense parts for like the last 20 to 30 minutes of the movie.

The atmosphere was really so awesome and the tension is really high. Some random pop ups but its effective. The auditory apartment fits in perfectly with the characters. The acting and the scenes are good not perfect but its fine.

Overall, great film but if you're a found footage fan and want to be scared all night, then by any chance don't watch this unless you want to see something else before any new found footage horror film comes out.