Found footage in this instance worked! It was expertly handled, afforded believability, mainly for the main character Andrew. He used that camera as an extension of himself. He could not deal with the ‘real world’ one on one; the camera acted as the filter.

What would have ruined the movie is if they would have turned them into superheroes. This was more ‘realistic’ of their developmental psychology–to play pranks on people because their maturity level hasn’t progressed to the point where they could take on that role of responsibility, ie. adulthood. So it worked.

The film is underrated based on expectations that Hollowood has created. You have Michael Bay to thank for that.
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1) that’s a huge freaking camera he carries around with him. It’s ginormous. Yet half the time people just ignore it like it’s normal to walk around with this giant tank on your shoulder. It just doesn’t make sense.. his cousin is upset that he brought it to the rave.. it’s a rave people LOVE cameras at raves. The cheerleaders call him a pervert like he’s filming upskirt shots with his cell phone suspiciously. That’s a professional level camera and it looks like one. He’s a weird loner kid but he’s not a pervert.

2) the problem with found footage films.. is that someone has to actually find the footage. That’s the huge problem that nearly ruins the film for me here. Cloverfield, Dead Island Teaser, Blair Witch all those are found footage films but they actually explain WHY. There needed to be SOME context for the footage. When it started I thought it was going to be footage for his blog or something but the problem is we watch all this footage and then they lose the camera. That one scene just stood out and broke the immersion because now I’m confused how am i watching this footage when the camera literally was lost. (and then as we find out never actually recovered). Towards the end I was hoping this would be say a military record of “The Incident” or something like that. That would make sense.. military compiled the footage from his personal cameras (maybe even dug up the first one) and put it together as an incident report. Or how about before I finished the movie when it was still possible they would become heroes. perhaps this would be archive footage in their museum. At the end of the movie we would flash forward and see a kid watching a screen in a museum where this story plays out continuously. That could have worked even if it was two heroes and one villain or one and one or anything. The point is it needed /something/ to explain WHY it’s found footage.

Like I said the lack of context and the unrealistic way people reacted to this gigantic camera (it’s no flipcam) definitely detracted from the film. Those are the reasons I would have given it 4/5 stars. The fact that it’s SO good beyond those two issues save it from getting 3/5 stars.