Polaroid

•             PG-13
•             Horror/Mystery/Teen
•             US Release:  September 17, 2019 (Limited)
•             Runtime:  1 hour 28 minutes
•             Directed by Lars Klevberg
•             Written by Blair Butler
•             Production Studio:  Dimension Films / Eldorado Films / Vertigo Entertainment
•             US Distributor:  Vertical Entertainment
•             Production Budget:  ???
•             Starring Kathryn Prescott, Tyler Young, Samantha Logan, Keenan Tracey, Priscilla Quintella, Javier Botet, Mitch Pileggi
•             Grade:                         C-
•             Rating:              Forgettable!

 

Mousy high school student Bird (Kathryn Prescott), a mechanical genius and budding photographer, is given an old Polaroid camera by a co-worker. It’s a rare model, so she’s completely thrilled with the gift. She notices something odd, though, when she tests it on her co-worker; there is a faint, human-shaped smudge in the photograph. After her co-worker is found dead, she notices the same smudge on another photo she took of a group of her friends. When one of them is also found murdered, they realize that something sinister is tied to the camera. In desperation, they begin searching for the origins of the camera and its previous owners, all while trying to avoid a dark presence that has begun to stalk them mercilessly from the shadows.

Polaroid has been sitting in limbo for nearly two years awaiting a theatrical release in the US. It won’t get one. It will receive a limited release online in about a week.

I’m not sure it deserves even that.

Polaroid is nothing new. As in virtually every teen horror flick in the past thirty years, mid-20s supermodels are cast as high school students (the two leads were 26 and 27 at the time of filming), and they are given the most atrocious dialogue imaginable. A few of the actors – Keenan Tracey and Mitch Pileggi – are actually quite good, but the rest are bland eye-candy that never make an impression. Once again, the story revolves around a haunted device of some kind, and once again the kids are all alone to try and solve their problem because, for no reason at all, adults either don’t believe them or don’t notice anything unusual. There is no enlightenment provided for how the dark presence got into the camera in the first place, and no explanation for how it manages to slip into the real world and murder people. It opens with two ‘teen’ characters that are never seen again or referenced at all, it has the oh-so-common library scene, and every major event in the movie is embarrassingly predictable.

It’s not a badly made film, though. The story had some creepy moments, and director Lars Klevberg was competent enough to craft a legitimately spooky atmosphere in a multitude of venues, such as a police station, the high school, the old camera shop, and one of the victim’s homes. The filmmakers also wisely secured the talents of Javier Botet, a man who has built a career of playing contortionist beasties in a variety of horror films (It: Chapter Two, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Mara, Slender Man, The Conjuring 2, Insidious: The Last Key, and so many more). The special effects around the entity were hardly groundbreaking, but they were solid enough. Polaroid also had excellent pacing; it’s a fast, fluid, and methodical horror film that doesn’t get bogged down in tangents.

Polaroid isn’t an offensively bad movie, it’s an offensively ordinary movie. Horror fans have been down this road a thousand times already, so why give us more of the same? At best, I expect that some casual or young filmgoers that don’t see many horror movies might enjoy Polaroid, but otherwise this is a movie destined to be forgotten.