The Den (2013)★★★★☆

I haven’t been sleeping well this week…and watching this movie tonight will definitely not help with that. Aside from some computer movie magic, there’s nothing in this film that couldn’t happen, and those stories are always the scariest.

Likely because it’s pretty scary, I liked this movie. It’s paced weirdly so there are parts that drag on but overall this is an above average scary movie. The story is interesting, the actors are believable, and there’s no need for fancy special effects or impressive background music so it’s really just the audience and the increasingly scary stuff happening on screen.

This isn’t the first movie to use chatrooms and webcams to tell the story. It mostly works here, though some of the more shaky camera views (like when Elizabeth’s friend is walking to her car) can get a bit dizzying. I like that this medium means there’s no need for a background score, so there’s one less thing to distract from what’s happening.

And there’s some crazy, terrifying stuff happening here. I like that the cast was completely unfamiliar the first time I saw this – it made the story seem more realistic and therefore scarier than if everyone had been a familiar face.

This isn’t a perfect movie, but it’s one of the best implementations of this concept that I’ve seen.