Review: THE FINAL PROJECT is Ghost Hunters: The College Years

The premise of THE FINAL PROJECT is simple: six college students visit a supposedly haunted plantation to film a documentary for extra credit. They realize too late that supposedly is more like definitely.

Kind of like the audience, who will realize too late that they definitely chose the wrong movie if they go see this one.

If that sounds harsh, it's because it is. But THE FINAL PROJECT is a deeply flawed, and deeply disappointing, film.

The execution is there. Director Taylor Ri'chard successfully utilizes the conventions of the found footage genre -- shaky, handheld camera work; unskilled angles and framing; and muffled, sometimes distorted sound. Ri'chard also makes use of head cams which add a fresh, first-person perspective. And the conceit -- a documentary produced for class -- is a clever way to sneak in exposition.

Ri'chard wrote THE FINAL PROJECT with Zach Davis, and their characters are what you'd expect from a horror film: Anna (Teal Haddock) the group leader, and our quietly serious final girl; Genevieve (Arin Jones), Anna's best friend with boy troubles and a mysterious connection to the plantation; Jonah (Leonardo Santati), a wannabe director and Genevieve's ex; and Gavin (Sergio Sauve), a student-athlete and Genevieve's current. The group is rounded out with Misty (Amber Erwin), a promiscuous princess, and Ky (Evan McLean), a kind of dorky dude who wants in with Misty.

We spend a lot of time with these characters, and that's the problem. THE FINAL PROJECT is a structural failure. It's an 80 minute film, but it takes 40 minutes for the group to get to the plantation and another 10 for night to fall. (And as we all know, scary things are most likely to happen at night.) For 50 minutes, we get to listen to the characters have extended, inane conversations, the kind that are mostly just obnoxious unless you're a part of them. The time Ri'chard and Davis spend establishing characters and relationships is more than enough time to learn that the characters are sometimes inexplicable illogical and mostly unlikable, which would be fine except that the script also shortchanges the audience in the kills department. Horror fans (who live for the kill, for the ghost/monster/hockey-masked man to appear and punch a spear through someone's neck, drag someone across the ceiling, etc.) will be disappointed. The characters meet unsatisfying ends in what amounts to little more than blink-and-you'll-miss-it horror.

It's no secret that found footage films are cheap to make. The format allows filmmakers to withhold and obscure. But Ri'chard and Davis hold out too long and withhold too much. It skimps on the visual, and also on the story. The setting offers a lot of room to explore and play with some big themes, so it's a shame that the house and its history received such short shrift in the narrative.

THE FINAL PROJECT, directed by Taylor Ri'chard, opens today, February 12, 2016.

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