Re-Cut (2010)

Re-Cut has a few good ideas, it really does, but it just takes them and ruins them with poor execution and a frustrating aimlessness. To say that it ends with a whimper rather than a bang is overselling it. Oh, and be warned, it's yet another "found-footage" movie.

Meredith Phillips, a woman who used to star on a reality TV show, plays Meredith Phillips, a woman who used to star on a reality TV show. She'd now a news reporter and Adam Baumgard (Ross Kohn) would like to make a documentary about her, assisted by his friend, David Stankowitz (Austin Basis). Meredith doesn't want to take part in the documentary, despite having already agreed to it over a phone call, but things fall into place when she is sent out on assignment and must procure her own crew. Instead of just a documentary on a former reality TV star, the boys will also get to film a major news story about the murder of two twin girls.

Director Fritz Manger (who also wrote the movie with Dylan Manger) seems to have had the seed of a good idea. Sadly, he seems to have covered that seed in manure, smothering and killing it instead of letting it grow. He sets everything up nicely, with the two filmmakers readying their standard cameras as well as a bag-cam, dashboard-cam and button-cam, but it all ends up being a neat framing device for a whole lot of nothing.

The cast don't do too badly and, as well as those mentioned, there are also decent turns from Christopher Redman, Richard Trapp and Tim De Zarn (probably best known to people at the moment for his memorable turn as Mordecai in The Cabin In The Woods.

Ultimately, it would seem to be the script that lets everything down here. There are one or two moments that nearly work but the majority just falls flat. The mystery elements of the crime don't really hold any mystery, the horror movie moments aren't scary or tense and there just isn't enough intelligence on display to make any other part of the movie worthwhile.

The only thing saving this from an even lower score is the fact that it does better than most "found footage" movies in justifying the camera being on at all times, it bravely tries to have its cake and eat it with the framing of the main footage and there were a few good visuals. Even then, I only recommend this to those who can handle scrapings from the bottom of the barrel.

3/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Re-Cut-DVD-Ross-Kohn/dp/B004LLZJM8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1358080112&sr=8-1