Terrible writing, bad editing, stock sound effects that I've heard used in student projects a hundred times, four completely unrelated stories, all of these things come together to make maybe the worst found-footage anthology film I've ever seen. The Dark Tapes tries desperately to capture the same feeling that the V/H/S series evoked when it first began, but fails miserably for many of the aforementioned reasons. At one point about midway through the film, an "Inter-dimensional Entity" (clearly a man in a cheap Halloween costume, some of the worst practical effects I've seen in a good while) delivers the following line through a bad "demonic" voice modulator: "I am not some simply some ghoul from your pathetic realm!"
I physically cringed at that point, and the film only continued to get worse as it went on (Spoilers ahead). Despite what many of the descriptions say, there is no linking factor in the over-arching story that brings together, justifies, or even attempts to explain any context for the other 3 stories. There's a ghost hunting segment that turns out to be about serial killers, an alien invasion story that starts with a rape, and some demonic cannibal cam girls, whose stories break up the framing narrative, which is a completely detached story about how sleep paralysis is really inter-dimensional creatures that just like to hang out and creep on sleeping folks for reasons that are never addressed or explained. All of the expositionary dialogue is clunky and overbearing, the acting is stale and there's not a single notable performance among the cast. There were certain concepts that could have been really interesting if they were executed with some competence, but as it stands The Dark Tapes simply doesn't cut it.
If you're a fan of horror, found footage films or even just decent movies, I'd highly recommend you skip this one.
I physically cringed at that point, and the film only continued to get worse as it went on (Spoilers ahead). Despite what many of the descriptions say, there is no linking factor in the over-arching story that brings together, justifies, or even attempts to explain any context for the other 3 stories. There's a ghost hunting segment that turns out to be about serial killers, an alien invasion story that starts with a rape, and some demonic cannibal cam girls, whose stories break up the framing narrative, which is a completely detached story about how sleep paralysis is really inter-dimensional creatures that just like to hang out and creep on sleeping folks for reasons that are never addressed or explained. All of the expositionary dialogue is clunky and overbearing, the acting is stale and there's not a single notable performance among the cast. There were certain concepts that could have been really interesting if they were executed with some competence, but as it stands The Dark Tapes simply doesn't cut it.
If you're a fan of horror, found footage films or even just decent movies, I'd highly recommend you skip this one.