My appreciation of shaky cam POV running through the woods films began and ended with The Blair Witch Project. There are just too many these days, a sub-genre flooded with crap that any filmmaker with a camera and can run in the woods can create, but with much less innovation.

Ejecta, while not entirely made of POV (found footage) film, a majority of it is. Which makes a majority of it crap, in my opinion. You can only be scared, or frightened so many times of someone running through the woods, screaming and scared of something the audience never sees. It’s old folks, really old, and tiresome.

The story of Ejecta follows a single documentary filmmaker Joe Sullivan, who is excited that someone named Nader Spider (or some ridiculous sounding name) has contacted him for an interview, because no one has been able to find him, he’s been living off the grid for years…but he’s been blogging about his experiences for years and sending emails…

Ummm okay, no way to trace an IP address…right.

Anyway, we get the staple sit down interview with this guy who’s supposed to have had experiences with aliens. We get the shaky camera running around the woods when the “aliens” supposedly land, we get the Scooby-Doo sound effects of the aliens that’s supposed to make this all scary. But we never see the alien; oh wait, there are two shaky cam shots where I swear the filmmakers, Chad Archibald and Matt Wiele, try and sneak an image of an alien in there, it’s off to the right both times and blends in with the trees, so I can’t be sure, even when I paused the flick.

Outside the found footage junk, you have a super secret military base where they take the alien guy, William Cassidy, to a place to try and get details from him about his alien experiences. In walks into the room the worst part of the movie: Dr. Tobin, superbly over-acted by Lisa Houle. Her performance is laughable throughout the film; she’s trying to be the sarcastic, tough doctor, but fails miserably. Again, I don’t know if she’s that bad of an actor or if the filmmakers directed her to portray the character this awfully, so I don’t want to blame Houle wholeheartedly here. But just watching her performance made me uncomfortable, even embarrassed for her.

The film is not entertainment, nor is it scary, and is certainly one to pass over. If you’re in the mood for some IFC Midnight Alien goodness pick up Almost Human instead, a much better film and much better performances.

 

EJECTA (2014) Review: Just Another Shaky Cam Alien Film With No Aliens