Hooked Up

Trying to get past a breakup, a pair of friends head to Barcelona to find women, and when they take a pair back to their house they end realizing that they've become involved with a dangerous demonic force intent on killing them forcing the pair to try to get out of the house alive.

This was a decidedly decent if wholly underwhelming found-footage effort. One of the more enjoyable elements here is the great work it does at presenting a rather intriguing and potentially suspenseful situation. The idea of taking the rather familiar route of the girl being some kind of demonic spirit creature at the end of the night means that the clichéd set-up means that there's plenty of fun to come from the creature going out to kill them as that kind of action is what sells this. There's plenty of brutal, gory bloodletting that emerges from this kind of action as all kinds of encounters and confrontations with the demon spirit makes for an enjoyable time. Along with the great amount of fun that comes from how it works out the final twist at the end, which comes off with a slight bit of originality and does end this on a somewhat enjoyable note. While these here make this one watchable enough, there's a lot of problems with this one. The biggest problem here is the fact that there's just not a whole lot of interest in the first half here as we're continually around this annoying and really irritating group of friends who are really not worth spending time with. The fact that they continually rag on each, push each other into situations they don't want to be involved in and are just basically not that interesting with all the dude-bro comments doesn't make for an endearing or enjoyable start to this one. Not only that, the film's entry into the particular found-footage genre means that very little of the film makes any sense at all, from how the film's battery life is able to stay lit the entire seventy some-odd minute running time while having the bright flashlight feature enabled the entire time to why the pair are continually wanting to record the matters of what might be their last moments alive instead of trying to save themselves or wondering why the film is able to be recorded in the first place with the indestructible nature of the camera being able to stay on whenever it crashes to the ground or gets thrown into the wall with the videographer. None of these efforts are all that intriguing and really just make this one part of the genre which fall into all the usual problems here and that doesn't make for a fun time here. Likewise, the other big problem here is the fact that there are so many moments of questionable decision-making that continually puts them in danger rather than being realistically played out to try to get them out of the house, and for the most part it's what really holds this one back.

Rated R: Graphic Language, Graphic Violence, Nudity and excessive drinking.