Directed by: Jason Richard Miller
Starring: Parry Shen, Colton Dunn, Eddie Mui, Eric Artell, Beth Alspaugh
Four friends decide to take a trip to Vegas. Jodie (Artell) decides to film the journey for his youtube channel but also for Janelle (Alspaugh), as she is worried that her husband Nick (Mui) will start to gamble again and wants a record of his time there. Compadres Dave (Dunn) and Jeremy (Shen) have come to play Roulette and also take part in a mysterious game of high stakes poker.
This raises issues from the start. Like why would a group of friends take a degenerate gambler to Vegas for the weekend? Why does no one seem at all bothered when said gambler then borrows a large sum of money off a loan shark? It’s an odd set up, like a found footage 'Hangover' but without any laughs. Like watching people you don’t like showing you their holiday DVD's. That is unless you find the idea of Nick talking in depth about how much more he poops when out of town cutting edge humor.
This goes on for fifty excruciating minutes before anything of note happens - a brief pit stop in an abandoned suburb that may be the sight of some alien encounters, urged to go there by a conspiracy theorist in a diner en route to the City of Sin, is the only relief from these low jinks. A visit that will come back to haunt them when they have to escape from Vegas at short notice.
There is very little to recommend in this film. Shaky cam found footage has been done to death now and this adds absolutely nothing to the genre. This could have been a rubbish comedy or rubbish Science Fiction, what we get is a lazy hybrid of the two which just makes it rubbish squared.
The acting is the only saving grace; everyone is putting in hard work with woeful material and even though you end up hating everyone in it, at least they are well drawn assholes.
You know you are watching a stinker when you start ticking off things that would be marginally less painful than watching this film. Like a chilli sauce colonic, or an exam from a proctologist with big hands, or a dental exam without an anaesthetic.
That the best part of this movie is the draining of an alien cyst tells you all you need to know. Begone found footage movies and never darken my door again.
2/10
Jason Abbey