Review of Jeruzalem (2016) by Marissa M — 01 Oct 2016

JeruZalem is directed and written by Doron and Yoav Paz, and it stars Yael Grobglas, Yon Tumarkin, and Danielle Jadelyn in a Israel found-footage film about 2 best friends going on a vacation to Tel Aviv, but with different circumstances, they ended up in Jerusalem, and the longer they stayed there, the more inevitable it's going to lead to.

I saw that the reviews were higher than the typical horror found-footage, and I was curious to see stuff go really down in that film, and when I finished it, I think the reviews for it are unusually high for this as I honestly hated this film.

Before I talk about why I hated it, I'm going to talk about the stuff that I liked in it. The setting at Jerusalem is really cool as it gives some interesting information about the place itself. The acting is good, the smart glass they used is a bit of a different style for found-footage that would make sense in a way that is being filmed.

There were some scares that got me, and the effects look fine for the most part. Now that's done, I'm gonna say what really doesn't work. One of them however, is the smart glass itself. It seems to cut in weird places that make me feel like it's because the movie wanted to cut there, not because the characters did that, which would've been more natural and not distracting.

While I appreciate that they haven't start the apocalypse until half way through as it'll give a lot of build-up, but it wasn't replaced with interesting things either as when the movie keeps going, I get more and more disinterested with it.

The characters are boring to watch, and when things start happening, I became more and more annoyed with the main character with her stupid decisions that she had made constantly, and that she just screams at them a lot which makes me want to see her get bitten.

Some of the creatures were just there for effects as they brought nothing to the characters's situation, and while it was reminding me of REC and a bit of Cloverfield, it was more or less the annoying version of Cloverfield, and just the remake of REC called Quarantine.

It honestly would've worked if it went more insane and doesn't make dumb mistakes or be annoying, but I got more mad when the movie keeps going, and I was just glad that it was over.