A young girl staying in touch with her boyfriend via a webcam discovers an unimaginable horror linked to the house she just moved into.
Genre
Horror, Mystery, Thriller
Opinion
I’d started watching this movie some time ago. Something happened where I couldn’t finish it, and I never got back to it because I couldn’t remember the name of the movie! Luckily, or unluckliy for my time and temper, I rediscovered the movie while researching found footage movies. As you know, I’m a sucker for found footage, no matter how terrible, so I suppose in watching this movie, I got what I deserved.
The movie begins with some newspaper clippings and vague old-time pictures you know are going to come into play later. Yeah, yeah, let’s get to the movie. Stop with all the history you’re just going to repeat over and over throughout the movie.
The premise is a woman moves to New Jersey for college, leaving her boyfriend behind in Virginia. Because they are so very attached to one another, they use a webcam and video chat to keep in touch.
First of all, the Windows 95 interface and the silly looking software for the videochat kind of hooked me right away. Being a tech oriented person, I was really wondering how they were able to connect via video chat using a telephone landline. It looked like Prodigy or CompuServe interface. But my tech meanderings aren’t really important right now. Let’s get on to the movie.
Dude, really? He wore a backwards baseball cap so well, I should count it as the actor in the movie. Every single time he was on screen, dude was sporting that backwards hat. To be fair, the movie was made in 2002, so the style was HAWT back then. Other than that, he looked like a real desperate grease monkey trying to hold on to his lady friend.
On the other hand, the female lead was quite striking and charismatic. Now, I usually don’t go on and on about the leads, but when there is nothing but chit-chat going on, you have nothing to do but focus on the two actors involved. I enjoyed watching her performance.
The mystery itself was pretty intriguing, and we get some glimpses of early 2000 webcam folk, but I must say, the entire movie fell flat at the end. With all the web research, the spooky buildup and a scary psychic, the ending was a little bit of….what just happened. Hey, maybe it’s me and I didn’t get the deeper meaning of the movie or I missed something when I looked away from the screen. Bottom line is, The Collingswood Story held my attention, then dropped it like a lead balloon.
Not Recommended, unless you are interested in early 2000 computer technology.
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