Malibu Horror Story had become a legend among found footage films, a mystery film that played the 2023 horror festival circuit (some said 2022 as well) and yet never got a theatrical or streaming release.  So when it suddenly showed up on streaming during the past week, I was really excited - a chance to catch a white whale at last!

Well unfortunately Malibu Horror Story did not live up to the anticipation for me.  The film follows the usual webcast crew doing a mockumentary, where they are following in the footsteps of four video-camera-toting high school seniors who disappeared in a cave years before.  As the crew make their doc and review the found footage, one of them is…

Quando já estava perdendo as esperanças de que conseguiria ver esse filme, ele magicamente aparece pra mim num site. Infelizmente, a espera não valeu a pena.

São 3 filmes em 1: tem o found footage, o mockumentary e o filme gravado de maneira tradicional e nenhum funciona bem.

O mockumentary é básico e tem pouca presença na trama. O found footage é o mais generico e falso possivel, comete todos os erros de varios outros filmes do msm gênero, além de copiar todos e ser digno de um segmento da franquia V/H/S. E a trama dos jovens investigando as filmagens é entediante e super fraquinha.

As atuaçoes são péssimas e nenhum personagem ganha a minha empatia. Tem até uma guria…

Oh my god. It's inside him.

A painful found footage/mockumentary experience. Big AI slop vibes. I researched whether this movie definitively used AI and while I cannot find citable information either way, it sure reeks of it in those intro credits and during several of those poorly edited mockumentary interjections.

For a film that was in production for a decade and spent years looking for distribution, it's an embarassing attempt at a finished product. The writing is childish, the story is derivative, and the acting is some of the worst I've ever seen in this sub genre.

For some, this might be one of those 'so bad it's good' type things. For me, it just sucks furious donkey phallus. This…

Nothing about this worked for me. The found footage portions were tired and unremarkable. The mockumentary parts were poorly done and unconvincing. And wrapping it all in a traditional narrative framework robbed both of any sense of realism. The lore is generally pretty offensive to Indigenous peoples and digs up long-tired harmful tropes for no reason aside from lazy writing. The acting is terrible, and I'm tired of uninspired filmmakers hiring contortionists for their monster performers. There's no logical reason for it here, other than "we thought it would look scary." I can't really think of an aspect of this that would be worth your time, to be honest. But if you're like me, you're going to watch it because…

I watched Malibu Horror Story (2023) in theaters last night. The storyline follows a group of Malibu high school friends who go missing in some historically mysterious hills in California. A tape from the hikers surfaces that a group that researches paranormal activity get their hands on. They set out for the hill to uncover what may have led to the teen’s disappearance.  

This movie is written and directed by Scott Slone (2001: An EDM Odyssey) and stars Dylan Sprayberry (Teen Wolf), Robert Bailey Jr (The Happening), Valentina de Angelis (As the World Turns) and Rebecca Forsythe (Replace).

This film had all the ingredients for a worthwhile found footage movie. The storyline was unique and unlike anything I’d seen…