Fangoria Presents: Entity

Great choice for a thriller.

I didn't expect much as far as special effects and that held true. The film doesn't utilize much for special effects anyhow. It focuses more on fear being induced by the unknown and barely glimpsed. I won't spoil it but the acting is good. I didn't have any cringe moments where it felt forced. The backstory in the film is creepy and plausible. The sorts of events that precede the current events of the story are based on things that actually did occur. I like that aspect as I've always been a believer in the greatest monsters are of our own making. The film ending unlike SO MANY FILMS wasn't a let down for me. I respected the way they ended the movie and honestly I quite enjoyed it. It is not a gore shrine. It is not a CGI infested nightmare. It is not the exact same hackneyed horror movie tropes. There is much more of a psychological and intellectual fear in the movie. If you like The Others or the Sixth Sense you will likely enjoy this film if you can forgive it being low budget.

It doesn't include a raving maniac chopping people up with an axe and hanging their heads on spikes. It doesn't include a big toothy dinosaur that roars at the camera then pulls people apart. It doesn't feature spaceships that fly super-fast into meteor storms. It is a simple investigation-of-a-dark-place scary story done without blood flying everywhere, extended scenes of torture, or anything else audiences now apparently come to expect from such movies.It actually comes off as a radio drama or written story would, meaning the more imagination you have to bring to this, the better it will work for you. Visually, it's nothing particularly new. But the story, unlike a number of other Amazon Prime movies I've seen, is coherent and the evil presence in it has an appropriate motivation for what it does. The opening of this movie is the worst part of it, as it is pretty stiff and a little too long. But the story gets better as it goes along until it gets to a perfectly acceptable ending which makes you rethink everything you've seen in it before.The best thing about it is that it takes place in what seems much more like the real world than a lot of other horror movies do, and its only unbelievable-thing-you-must-accept in it is the idea of the existence of psychics and the idea that a troubled spirit of a murdered person can live on and turn vengeful.The biggest negative is that you don't clearly see what happens to most of the people who get in bad trouble behind locked doors in it, and for those wanting a bloody payoff in such movies, that might feel like a gyp. And some of the shaky-cam style footage in it doesn't totally work. But, again, do we need to see a tentacled monster or beheading to be satisfied with such scenes in a scary story?The payoff is there, it does eventually arrive, and it makes sense, you just have to be patient as it appears only at the very end of the movie.This is definitely a minor film, with a small cast, and no spaceships, but is that such a bad thing? The intro is a little dull and should have been cut down a bit but the rest is fine and I was happy to have seen it. It made me think after it was over, and I like thinking.

I watched the trailer for this movie and thought it looked good so I gave it a try. The story is not new, but the plot was different enough to peak my intrest. The setting in the remote Siberian region of Russia was creepy enough for a movie in this genre, but the exterior shots of the buildings didn't fit the part for a secret Russian human testing lab/prison facility. The interior of the building fit the parameters better although it did not appear as a facility used for researching humans, (observation rooms, labs, tiled walls etc.) but more of some type of industrial fabrication facility. The movie does possess an eerie and creepy feel from its remote location and the low light settings for the scenes. The acting was decent especially for this sub genre catagory with the minor exception of the lead reporter/investigater Kate (Riley) and her scream scenes that get a little annoying. The medium Ruth (Kirwan) does a convincing job with her role as the conduit between the living and the dead. Her job is to find what really happened to the people who were found in shallow graves a short distance from the buildings. The rest of the crew was a camera operater Matt (Hill) a sound tech David (Jackson) and a Russian Yuri (Tomovic) guide/interpreter who called the investigative crew in for the investigation. I found little in all of this footage (there is some shaky cam work, but not a lot) to raise my heart rate or to make me jump at anything that was on screen. I felt a little cheated by this movie for its lack of any really scary "jump out of my seat" scenes. The good acting and the errie/creepy aura was not enough to raise this movie above the crowd of this overused genre. The movie has a couple of twists, but they are neither surprising or shocking because of the predictability of the story and the clues given to the viewer. People have argued as to whether or not this is a found footage movie? In the movie we are never shown any found footage (there is a Russian clip at the begining of the movie thats not mentioned by the crew) evidence so in that respect I would say no, But how could their story be told since they're never heard from after arriving near the scene? So did someone find their equipment and show their findings or was all this just a figment of our imaginations? I'm going out on a limb here and saying that YES it is THEIR found footage!! There I said it. Its logical and it makes sense.Warning: The streaming versions audio is bad in places especially during conversations.Rating 0 to 5Story = 2Plot = 4Acting = 3+Direction = 2Eerie/Creepy = 3+Fear Factor = -2Gore = 1Sex/Nudity = No/NoFoul Language = Yes, but very little.Entertainment Value = 2

There's a lot of movies on Amazon that are worse than this. This movie is a mix of traditional cinematography and the found footage style. From what I've noticed in movies that use the shaky camera method of recording, it's to hide the inadequacies. Like maybe their budget couldn't cover great special effects, maybe the writing isn't as strong and so on. I suspect, with this movie in particular, it was done because the money for great SFX just wasn't there. What was shown wasn't terrible but you never really get a clear picture of it. There's nothing that really makes this movie stand out as great or horrible. The plot is somewhat generic but still original enough to work. The technical aspects were all good. I don't regret watching it but I probably wouldn't watch it again.