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Rating: 2 out of 5
In the Eternal words of Andre 3000: “Shake it like a Polaroid picture! Hey ya!” That is about as good as it will get with this film. The world has presented a supernatural film based on a polaroid camera with a supernatural monster that kills people from the picture. Oh lawd help me that I won’t be able to take a picture again because I watched this film. Now I won’t be able to look at my mom’s Polaroid camera the same again. If you think I’m sarcastic, then I totally am.
Now, the film starts off almost the same exact way as the Ring. Where is the original thought in stuff anymore? A girl named Sarah (the girl who plays Cherry Blossom from Riverdale) and her friend are going through a box of her late mother’s stuff. Sarah finds an old Polaroid camera and accidentally takes a picture of herself. There is a creepy shadow/smudge behind her, but she thinks nothing of it. She gets scared, blah blah blah and then gets attacked by the entity and killed. Almost like the Ring after they watch the tape. I guess this is the new way horror movies need to start off and set the tone. We get it. If there is an object that has some type of demon force behind it, it will kill the person.
Now for the actual story. It is one where we get the usual main character who is somewhat cool but not all the way cool. This is standard in a typical horror movie now. This time we get a shy high school student named Bird (Kathryn Prescott). How does one get hold of a demon camera??? You guessed it; she is given the old Polaroid camera by her co-worker who got it from a garage sale. I guess that is one way to get a camera to move through things. I would’ve tossed it. What about your cell phone? You can’t take a decent photo with your phone now. Oh well, the camera has the initials “RJS” carved into it. Bird snaps a picture of Tyler but later notices an odd smudge-like figure on his photo. Next, Bird attends a costume party with her best friend Kasey (Samantha Logan) and meets her other friends Mina, Mina’s boyfriend Devin, Avery, and Bird’s high school crush Connor (Tyler Young). She uses her Polaroid camera to take the group’s picture. Later on, the smudge gets closer to Tyler, and he is soon killed by the entity. Bird distraught looks over the photo that was taken of Tyler and sees that the picture is free of the shadow as has transferred itself to another photo. Now the friends must figure out what is really going on to stop the entity from killing them one by one.
One has to love horror movies these days. I don’t know if they are getting better or worse over the years. Well, with this one, the object of everyone’s nightmare is a polaroid camera. I would say it is intriguing to have a polaroid camera. I mean, in the Ring, it was a videotape, Annabella was a demon doll, so why not a polaroid camera. How many of us use our parent’s polaroid camera? Hell, the polaroid camera was the shit back in the day. You take that picture and then flick your wrist over and over again to make the image appear faster. Oh, the days of having a good polaroid camera. Andree 3000 knew what was up.
This is a standard horror movie that uses teens to get their point across. I will say that the use of a camera and the photo does its job just a tad bit. The monster is actually decent in the film, but you never really see it until the end when you get the big reveal on how the beast came to be. Is it mind-blowing?? Nope. Had that usual on how the Polaroid camera came to be and why the monster appears. It’s a film and story that can be done without ever watching. Plus, how do you have a movie without any jump scares. Everything was pretty much a laugh rather than a scare. I will say this that it was quite interesting that anything that happened to the photo would happen to the person in real life. I actually sat up when one of the characters lit the picture on fire, and as the flame came closer to one of the characters, they started to smoke in real life. When the girl put out the fire, the picture went back to being normal, like nothing happened.
The characters are also substandard and a bore. It is the typical high school clique. You have the standard shy girl, the popular girl, the athlete, and so on. I guess this is one way to sell all horror films. If only there was a way to show a movie without always going to the wishing well.
Polaroid is a supernatural horror film that can be skipped. I don’t even know why I watched it. It was probably because I was really, really bored and it looked interesting. No matter. I’m going to keep that Andre 3000 playing and shake that polaroid picture.
