Polaroid is a supernatural horror film directed by Lars Klevberg. The plot follows troubled outsider Bird (Katheryn Prescott), who is given an old Polaroid camera by a young man who is trying to woo her. Little do either of them know that the camera is haunted by the spirit of an evil photographer, who used the camera to take nude pictures of his daughter and then kill her friends when they tried to stop him and now, he is back.
Why does no one in this small town seem to remember these grisly murders? Why are there 3 really unnecessary confusing plot twists in this film? Why is the camera killing people who are not even related to his daughter secret? Who knows, who knows that is all I can say about the plot of this film; which really does prove that these days anything, and I do mean anything, will be turned into a horror film.
This film is not aggressively good or bad but rather it is just incredibly generic, you have seen the same premise, just without the camera, before. There is nothing new or original about this film, even down to the individual character. Bird is the troubled girl who is grieving a parent and thinks that their death was her fault, I wonder where I have heard that before, oh yeah Annabelle Comes Home and about 100 other film horror films. She has a stereotypical group of friends who are all vapid and self-obsessed, which seems to be a staple of modern horror films and everything is just incredibly samey.
The actual monster itself is just lazy creature design, normally it is a good thing to not show the monster and build suspense, but here you just end up hoping they won’t because it looks so bad, laughably so. The wheezing that seems to indicate when the monster/demon/spirit is around is not in any way scary.
Everything about this film is generic, it is lazy and does nothing new. The monster isn’t scary and the threat it represents to the characters is never really explained, the plot holes in the film only make this worse. There is no reason why the monster would go after the central group of kids, they have nothing to do with his daughter, it makes no sense at all. If this was an exercise in product placement for Polaroid, then they should ask for their money back.
Pros.
Some of the creature elements are cool.
The mystery is good up until the final half hour.
Cons.
It has been done better before.
You don’t care about any of the characters.
It is offensively dumb.
2/5
Reviewed by Luke
Another Millennial Reviewer 