Mr. Jones

This one would have been rated so much higher by many users if it tried to be more coherent and not rely so much on the state of confusion/dream/hallucination. I'm not gonna tell them how to do their job, but I will state my opinion about it.

It has a little touch of "In the mouth of madness", don't get me wrong, I am not comparing them, the first one is truly a masterpiece, I mean, Carpenter, come on, but you can see some familiar drops here and there. The premise is good, the execution is good, the tension builds up nicely, Mr. Jones has quite the mystery air on him the only bad part, well, the really bad part, is that as time passes, this movie loses itself. I never fancied plots that needed too much thinking after it was over, sure, some brainstorming with friends is enjoyable, but when nobody can't put their finger on it, or there are just so many supposed meanings, it makes you not care at all in the end.

So, now that you know what's wrong with this one, it's up to you to decide if you'll give it a chance or pass it. I would definitely recommend it to most, cause I did enjoy it, sad it didn't end quicker.

Cheers!

Found footage with a twist? How many times have heard this one? Too many times to count. And not only was I skeptical, the movie kind of showed me that it was as I expected (which means not very good). But if you can stay with it through the end, you might get something of a "reward". By that I mean the really wicked ending, that is kind of psychedelic, even without the use of any enhancing drugs.

The effect is built up during the movie, which takes it sweet old time. Something that is sort of boring. Plus the characters are not really helping, doing what other horror movie stock characters do: wrong decisions, even when faced with consequences. But again, the ending almost makes up for that, if you like weird.

Convoluted tale of a young couple who drop everything to move to a house in the woods for a year while the husband films a documentary starts off sort of interesting but fails miserably in the last 30 minutes.

Scott and Penny notice "totems" or scarecrows around their property and eventually follow an enigmatic man famously known as Mr. Jones, who has been documented since the 70s. As they investigate further they are drawn into a nightmare world from which there seems to be no escape.

Unfortunately none of this continues to be interesting as the director seemingly abandons the found footage format for the last third of the movie and seems to use this ending part to experiment with different filming techniques.

I lost my interest and felt it dragged on and on and even though I barely understood what was going on, I didn't really care anymore. At least the female lead was a lot of fun to look at.

Right up until its final act, "Mr. Jones" (2013) amazed me by how good it was. Here was a creative, thoughtful and extremely frightening found-footage horror movie. It was so damned good that I was surprised that I hadn't heard about it before.

The story idea was fresh and interesting — a young couple moves to an isolated forest cabin, only to discover that a mysterious neighbor is "Mr. Jones," a legendary anonymous folk artist. This hermit produces grotesque artworks — "scarecrows," totems and dreamcatchers that he then mails to apparently random recipients around the world. Not all of them are pleased with their macabre gifts, and their benefactor's identity and motivations become the stuff of urban legends. (Try to imagine H.R. Giger with a modus operandi like Banksy.) There is a lot more going on here than a cliché yarn about a supernatural bogeyman.

The script is smart, the story is well developed, and the tension builds slowly and effectively as the tale unfolds for our two protagonists. My only quibble is that the couple does incredibly stupid things, and are cheerfully curious about discoveries that should scare the hell out of them. But that is a failing of so many horror films that I decided not to let it bother me.

Then the movie loses its way. I'm disappointed to share here that this otherwise great film suffers because of its disjointed, meandering and consequently frustrating climax. It's too long, it's too confusing, and it spends far too much time repeating redundant shots and scare-moments.

We see one character, for example, pursued by multiple adversaries … repeatedly. Well, these adversaries stop being scary when the viewer eventually arrives at the conclusion that either A.) they can't catch this person or B.) they can't hurt this person.

At another point, a character must do something urgent, but receives contradictory instructions from different sources. This plot development could have been damned unnerving in the context of our story, but it's nearly lost in a confusing barrage of repetitive images and sounds. Writer-director Karl Mueller strives to immerse the viewer in a kind of surreal "nightmare." But he makes a mistake that is common for surreal horror films — portraying confused and disoriented characters does not always require the viewer to be confused and disoriented. A shorter, sparser, cleaner script would have saved what might have been a classic.

Oh, well. This movie was still fun enough. Again … much of it is quite excellent. And another viewer might not be as turned off by its conclusion as I was. I still recommend "Mr. Jones," if a little reluctantly. I'd rate it a 7 out of 10.

Mr. Jones is now streaming on Netflix, and when I came upon it I think I was taken in by the striking cover art (it's not the one listed here on IMDb). It's of one of the "statues" in the movie, silhouetted against a plain background, with some relatively cheery looking writing underneath it. It's a hell of a poster, and a great advertisement for the film.

It's a pity I can't say as many good things about the film, because I really wanted to. Something about the film doesn't quite click, and it's hard to pinpoint exactly what it is. The action is good, the villain is creepy, and there's a good story. All ingredients that a horror movie needs to nail. Even the acting is good, much better than it needs to be.

As I said though, it just doesn't... click. The format chosen for this film was a really, really bad choice. It's completely overdone, and it doesn't suit many films at all(I can think of 2 films where this choice worked). All it really does here is serve to rip us straight out of the action on screen, made even worse by those obligatory moments where the camera dramatically cuts out and random, documentary-style interviews littered throughout the middle sections.

The closing sections of the film are also strewn with bad choices. It slips into a slinky, Lynchian nightmare for the last half hour, which is good on a purely visceral level (it's well made) but it feels practically unrelated to the rest of the film and offers us no progression on what we've already seen. It's all style and no substance, which is a shame when the film actually sets itself up so well.

This is a film that may be enjoyed by some, but not by most. Some films don't need an ending, and do well by leaving out a definitive one. This is not one of them.