About.com Rating

As found footage horror movies begin to lose some steam, could it be time for "webcam horror" to take center stage? Probably not, but with The Den, Open Windows and Cam2Cam all hitting screens this year, the fright potential of modern social technology has apparently taken root. While The Den mined online voyeurism for a pulpy, fun final product, though, Cam2Cam is shoddily made, illogical and just plain uninteresting.

The Plot

In Bangkok, globetrotting American Allie (Tammin Sursok) responds to a "room for rent" sign in a small apartment building and quickly finds out that the only room available was recently the site of a murder. Unfazed, she stays put, even when she learns that the killer is still on the loose and may be responsible for a string of decapitations around the city. Her curiosity about the case leads her to discover that the dead woman and several of her building-mates have ties to a mysterious adult webcam site called Cam2Cam. As she delves further, she finds herself a target, but of whom? And with deadly secrets all around her, whom can she trust with her life?

The End Result

IFC Midnight released The Den earlier this year, and it's surprising that the distributor has chosen to follow it up with Cam2Cam -- not because of the thematic similarities, but rather because the latter is so beneath the company's standards. From the stiff, borderline unintelligible acting to the plodding, illogical script, it's a how-to on how not to make a suspense thriller.

The 20-minute opening is by far the best part of the film, its competency making it feel like an entirely separate movie from the 70 minutes that follow. In fact, seeing that Cam2Cam appears to have begun as a 2006 short film of the same name goes a long way to explaining why it feels like 20 minutes of plot expanded unnecessarily into a feature-length product. The story putts along with no sense of urgency, crafting a mystery whose outcome manages to be both predictable and illogical. It even tries to toss in clichéd elements of a ghost story -- Allie "sees" some of the dead victims -- for no good reason other than the filmmakers think that's what's supposed to happen in a horror flick. The writing veers from lazy to downright nonsensical when she asks how many women the serial killer has murdered before she's even told there's a serial killer.

As you can imagine, the characters in Cam2Cam are cardboard -- and not the thick, durable cardboard you keep around for storage boxes or household tasks; no, they're the flimsy cardboard that's so cheaply made, you're not sure it's even recyclable. The often stunningly poor acting -- granted, much of it coming from actors whose first language isn't English -- makes it even harder to root for these unlikable characters whose decision-making skills are shoddy at best (One flees the scene of a murder with the murder weapon -- A BLOODY AXE -- in hand and runs for miles through crowded streets like she's carrying the Olympic torch or something.).

It's moments like this, combined with overly serious dialogue, melodramatic performances, a couple of random stabs at what I think is supposed to be humor, plus the occasional, out-of-the-blue full-frontal male nudity, that nudge Cam2Cam almost into "so bad it's good" territory. Almost.

The Skinny

• Acting: D (Stiff, amateurish, bordering on painful.)
• Direction: C- (Generates some creepiness early, but loses all sense of atmosphere.)
• Script: F (Implausible nonsense.)
• Gore/Effects: C+ (A couple scenes of good, practical gore effects.)
• Overall: D+ (Lazily written and poorly acted with no real sense of mystery.)

Cam2Cam is directed by Joel Soisson and is not rated by the MPAA. Release date: August 22, 2014.