First, lets get right to it: the ENTIRE movie takes place in a confession booth. Remember that movie Phone Booth? Now, imagine that the only camera was inside the booth and you never saw the outside world. Doesn't that sound like an awesome movie? No??? Well the creators of this apparently though it would be a good idea. While movies like Unfriended: Dark Web and the V/H/S series experiment with new ways to make the Found Footage style dynamic and interesting, Confessional goes for the opposite approach- removing any and all potential the medium has and delivering one of the absolute most barebones "films" in history. I'm extremely hesitant to even call this a film when it fact it's more like simply "Dialogue: The Movie".
Anyhow, since they didn't spend any money on the production of this movie hopefully they spent it on the story? Nope. This comes across as a 13-16yr olds revenge fantasy wet dream. The movie revolves around the character of Amelia who is apparently one small step away from Jesus- all the characters seem to idolize her to the level of a bad fanfic. Everyone loves her the most and is mad at so & so for falling short of loving her enough, or...something. The narrator is forcing everyone to confess and this narrator feels like a blatant and highly self-congratulatory self-insert. The characters are all cardboard cutout level 1-D (macho jock guy, a55hole alt right guy, crazy loner girl, guys roommate, someone's girlfriend, someone else's girlfriend) and act in completely unrealistic ways. They all let someone they didn't know all that well tape their "biggest regret"? Two people meet up and within seconds have sex in the booth? A guy has no reservations about getting sxcked off through a glory hole in the booth? Yes, totally believable things people would do, especially when being in a room watched/filmed by an unknown person! Unsurprisingly, the overall story is pretty straight-forward, generic teen/college drama. Everyone's "confession" is easily guessable within the first few minutes of them talking. Someone is gay, someone is cheating, someone was raped at a party...cornerstones of teen drama and absolutely no curveballs. They even go a step further and make it offensively dumb with the addition of 1 dimensional, heavy-handed, cartoonish "woke" stuff. The problem is that when you include very base-level woke stuff in a movie this bad/stupid, it makes people equate progressive ideas with a stupid ass movie of caricatures shoving their "woke" ideas upon the viewer and therefore not take them seriously. It would be much more effective if the movie was compelling and intelligently brought up progressive ideas in a way that accurately conveyed their seriousness. Additionally, this movie commits the cardinal sin of believing that "convoluted" is synonymous with deep/complex/unpredictable/smart. The movie continually cuts back and forth between the characters, giving them just enough time to talk without saying anything and then cutting away right when they might divulge some plot progressing information. This is done to artificially extend the rather shallow story and give the impression that the confession is going to be much more shocking than it actually is. It takes forever to get anywhere and you'll be constantly bored considering there is no actual visual stimuli- thereby forcing the movie to foolishly rely solely on its obtuse, overly confusing dialogue and storytelling. If you're going to reduce a movie to only the writing, than the writing needs to be exceptionally strong! Anyway, that's more than enough about this one. Terrible idea for a movie style; really low level, predictable writing; 1 dimensional, uninteresting characters; trite twist and complete lack of payoff. If I hadn't already cancelled my Shudder account than I would have after seeing this.
Anyhow, since they didn't spend any money on the production of this movie hopefully they spent it on the story? Nope. This comes across as a 13-16yr olds revenge fantasy wet dream. The movie revolves around the character of Amelia who is apparently one small step away from Jesus- all the characters seem to idolize her to the level of a bad fanfic. Everyone loves her the most and is mad at so & so for falling short of loving her enough, or...something. The narrator is forcing everyone to confess and this narrator feels like a blatant and highly self-congratulatory self-insert. The characters are all cardboard cutout level 1-D (macho jock guy, a55hole alt right guy, crazy loner girl, guys roommate, someone's girlfriend, someone else's girlfriend) and act in completely unrealistic ways. They all let someone they didn't know all that well tape their "biggest regret"? Two people meet up and within seconds have sex in the booth? A guy has no reservations about getting sxcked off through a glory hole in the booth? Yes, totally believable things people would do, especially when being in a room watched/filmed by an unknown person! Unsurprisingly, the overall story is pretty straight-forward, generic teen/college drama. Everyone's "confession" is easily guessable within the first few minutes of them talking. Someone is gay, someone is cheating, someone was raped at a party...cornerstones of teen drama and absolutely no curveballs. They even go a step further and make it offensively dumb with the addition of 1 dimensional, heavy-handed, cartoonish "woke" stuff. The problem is that when you include very base-level woke stuff in a movie this bad/stupid, it makes people equate progressive ideas with a stupid ass movie of caricatures shoving their "woke" ideas upon the viewer and therefore not take them seriously. It would be much more effective if the movie was compelling and intelligently brought up progressive ideas in a way that accurately conveyed their seriousness. Additionally, this movie commits the cardinal sin of believing that "convoluted" is synonymous with deep/complex/unpredictable/smart. The movie continually cuts back and forth between the characters, giving them just enough time to talk without saying anything and then cutting away right when they might divulge some plot progressing information. This is done to artificially extend the rather shallow story and give the impression that the confession is going to be much more shocking than it actually is. It takes forever to get anywhere and you'll be constantly bored considering there is no actual visual stimuli- thereby forcing the movie to foolishly rely solely on its obtuse, overly confusing dialogue and storytelling. If you're going to reduce a movie to only the writing, than the writing needs to be exceptionally strong! Anyway, that's more than enough about this one. Terrible idea for a movie style; really low level, predictable writing; 1 dimensional, uninteresting characters; trite twist and complete lack of payoff. If I hadn't already cancelled my Shudder account than I would have after seeing this.