First, this movie fails entirely as a horror movie. If you're looking for a scary movie, move on. The plot is nonexistent, there is nothing here that remotely constitutes being scary or tense. The 4 "other" girls might as well have been left out of the movie as they added nothing, have barely any screen time and the whole premise is never even explained or handled at all. Gorehounds, look elsewhere - no gore, no kills, no thrills. Even the initial premise of "if you look for the clues you might escape" is entirely abandoned immediately after the lines are read. There are no clues. There is no game. The horror movie present is tacked on, half-baked, generic, seen it a thousand times before, snoozefest.
Having said all that...the film DOES succeed incredibly well as being a film within a film - in what appears to be an unintentionally meta diversion from what was (presumably) the actual film.
The premise of the film is that the director David is basically creating a reality TV movie about normal girls doing normal things. The script is actually very well written and Alexandra Dreyfus is an incredible talent. The film within a film is that if you remove all of the poorly executed horror elements, you're left with a compelling character study of a teenage girl from a small town who wants to be a movie star. Alexandra is compelling in her role and I found myself falling for her beautiful eyes and fierce intelligence as David did. The meta aspect is that David is filming her audition for his fake reality TV movie but this film within a film could really serve as as a audition tape for actress Alexandra Dreyfus. She proves here she can carry a film on her own as there really is nothing else present in this movie of any value expect her. Despite the low budget and cheesy movie, her talent shines through and she succeeds in creating compelling content in scenes that a lesser talent would have made cringy. It is difficult to carry a whole movie on your own with no special effects, no other characters on screen and nothing to distract the audience from hyper focusing on your every word but Alexandra does it with grace. I hope to see this talented access move on to larger roles more befitting of her talent.
Usually, I root for the killer in horror movies but this is one of the few times I had really hoped she would escape. This movie is worth a watch for the story which is the story of thousands of young women across America (minus the tacked on 'horror' elements). It's immediately relatable and interesting and honestly I wanted to know more about her, her older sister and her life rather than watch the poorly executed third act that we have all seen a thousand times over - the confused girl wandering around in the dark sobbing for help until she meets her death at the hands of an obsessed stalker.
10/10 for Alexandra Dreyfus
7/10 for the script
1/10 for the rest.
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