Alternately boring and creepy, stream-of-consciousness home movie about five obnoxious teens hangin' out around town, checking out some supposedly haunted places on the outskirts of their tiny little town in Ohio. These little nitwits play pranks, puke, and generally act like obnoxious teens for about 80 minutes of the footage, but the other 15 minutes of it, was very creepy, and really got to me. Something about this movie stuck in my mind, more so than its obvious inspiration, The Blair Witch Project, a film which I have never been a fan of. This film has the similar look and tone, but largely different story and ideas, of the people of a small town exacting a horrific revenge on these little pricks. When the teens first think they see something in the dark in the woods, I watched the scene again to see if there really was something there. I didn't do that at any time, for any scene, in the BWP. The twins standing by the windows, blankly staring out at them, as simple as that may be, was supremely creepy, as was the little girl's voice on the radio. And the ending was brutal, very cold. But, for all its suspense in those scenes, I couldn't help get the feeling that these were just unbelievably boneheaded teenagers who, basically, get just what's coming to them. Also unusual and unique to this film is that such a major plot twist actually takes places *after* the closing credits.

I'll definitely check this film out again, which is more than I can say about its obvious inspiration, The Blair Witch Project.

It's not that uncommon for me to start a movie and be so turned off by it that I *actually* turn it off. It is uncommon, however, for me to give a movie a second chance and then be totally blown away by it. I stopped watching "June 9" about 37 minutes in, weary with the juvenile antics of the largely unlikable cast, the derivativeness of many scenes (the opening is almost stolen frame by frame from the opening tracking shot of "Halloween," down to the look and lighting) and the slowness of the story. I went to my PC and brought up IMDb, and the reviews here persuaded me to stick with it. I'm glad I did.

"June 9" effectively chronicles the first week of Summer vacation in a sleepy suburb of Cuyahoga Falls Ohio, as cool kids Robert and Derek cart their introverted sidekick Birdie, Derek's sister, and his girlfriend around in Robert's beater van. The inevitable boredom of Summer break-down almost immediately settling in, the quintet soon tire of playing their grade-school league pranks and become curious about the legends and myths that have grown up around Boston Mills, a neighboring town. The wild pot plants on the outskirts of the local nature preserve are an added bonus.

What writer/director T. Michael Conway lacks in framing ability --- the jacking off and practical jokes that embody much, much too much of the film's first half will get on your nerves --- he more than makes up for in some truly isolating and disturbing images: an abandoned shed is stocked with stone statues not out of place in a cemetery supply shop; shadowed figures stiffly stand, silently staring through windows; a white gowned, masked figure is briefly seen standing in a vacant field --- we see it, our protagonists don't. There's also a sequence where a character creeps into one of the townie's houses that is quite frankly one of the tensest five minutes I've experienced in a while.

Yes, these characters are annoying but the kids playing them are frankly very natural and don't seem for a minute to be "on stage." Their naturalness makes the climax even more unsettling and I for one was pleasantly surprised by its unrepentant savagery.

And perhaps the indifference and irritation we feel for them is intended, and this point really turned me around on my opinion of this film. Perhaps what is most disturbing about "June 9" is that it's not really a supernatural ghost hunt at all...it's about rural country people protecting what's theirs. I grew up in a small town in the middle of nowhere and that attitude is very much present in most communities. They'll leave you alone if you leave THEM alone...you screw with them, and they'll f*** you up...good.

Here is another "found footage" horror movie in which the story is told through home video shot by the characters. In this film, the premise is that some high schoolers are looking for something to do during the summer, so they drive to a small nearby community to poke around and mess with the locals. They peek in windows, sneak around garages, trespass, and ridicule people from afar. Little by little, weird things begin to happen. For example, on one trip, they look in a house and see several Amish-looking men just standing and staring ominously. After each incident, they go home, talk about what happened, hand out, and then get together to go back out to bother the strangers again. By the end of the movie, you start to feel like these kids definitely deserve some consequences. Eventually, they are brutally murdered by the residents of the town. We see them getting beaten and cut apart pretty graphically. It adds to the creepiness that the killers seem to be doing this in a very methodical manner, with their children helping out as if its a daily chore. This lengthy ending sequence is the most effective part of the film, and made it worth sitting through. Whereas the build up portions of the movie are fairly unremarkable, we get a very memorable horror movie payoff.