Review of Area 51 (2015) by Brandon W — 07 Sep 2015

For Oren Peli's Area 51, I was actually pretty excited to see it as he is directing and writing another film after the first Paranormal Activity. He wrote Chernobyl Diaries which was terrible, but it was also written by the Van Dyke brothers which one of them has written the Asylum DVDs, so I didn't blame entirely on Oren Peli.

So when it didn't came out for years, I did start to forget about it, until I saw that it was on Netflix which I was very curious about Area 51. As it turns out, Area 51 is not as groan inducing as Chernobyl Diaries, but it might as well be forgotten.

The acting is not nearly as good in this as in the director's previous film Paranormal Activity, and is just average. The characters are lacking any development that I didn't care about anyone or wanting them to survive.

The first hour of it is so boring that I kept looking at how much progress I got into it many times. Most of the time I get why it's being filmed, but there's times that makes no sense about why it's being filmed, and that it could've made a bit better if it wasn't found footage.

Things actually start to happen in the last 30 minutes which there are some cool effects in it, but even that was lacking in thrills. I like that there's no jump scares, but it doesn't do anything remotely scary that I start to wonder if it was even a horror film at all.

It has an unnecessary ending that is just like any other horror film. For Chernobyl Diaries, there can be a good horror film from it which frustrated me that it was not good, but for Oren Peli's Area 51, I can't see how they can make a effective horror film and is just plain forgettable.