3 out of 5

Directed by: Bryan Bertino

Can a horrible ending ruin a film?  Can a tolerable film survive a horrible ending?  Right: spoiler alert – there is mass agreement that the conclusion of ‘Mockingbird’ is atrocious.  Even in the questionably glowing review at bloody-disgusting.  But to answer my first two questions – yes, a horrible ending can ruin a film, but ‘Mockingbird,’ ‘The Strangers’ director Bryan Bertino’s delayed followup, is brief enough at 80 minutes and puts all of its energy into ratcheting up the terror such that, yeah, I think it does survive it’s shite end.  What we are watching is essentially a ‘found footage’-esque version of ‘Strangers,’ and frankly, the idea (and conclusion) are essentially the same, just without the name stars and omniscient camera.  Blending this repetition with the now way over-saturated FF genre seems to have rubbed many viewers the wrong way, but I liked the experiment with structure Bertino took in his flick; this is really just an experiment in keeping us on edge… fie to the plot or reason, really, as long as you can keep us heart-pumping for most of the runtime.  To me – I didn’t love ‘Strangers,’ so no attachment there, and I still think there’re possibilities with FF flicks – so to me, I was fine going in with open enough expectations.  And with that approach, ‘Mockingbird’s oddball take on home invasion is pretty effective.  It’s 1995.  Three separate people (a lives-with-mom loser,  lonely college (?) girl, and a married couple) receive a video camera wrapped as a gift on their doorstep one eve, and all think it’s the winnings from a sweepstake they recently entered.  It seems odd when they realize they can’t shut the camera off; it becomes frightening when each receives a video telling them to keep recording or, essentially, bad stuff will happen.  It’s a silly but passable way to dodge the ‘why are we filming this?’ question.  Our loser character is also given a different approach: his camera seems to come with instructions that have him dressing up as a clown and performing pranks all night, seemingly in the hopes of winning a cash prize.  Jumping between the three narratives actually worked for me because the couple gives us the shouting-at-each-other nonsense that’s the genre’s stock-in-trade while the college girl allows Bertino to revel in pulling out scares from silence and darkness.  Meanwhile, the clown gags are unnerving because of how eager the character is; when we sense that he’s being pushed toward the other two characters, it gives his arc an underwhelming sense of dread.  Again, to be clear, none of this is fantastic.  It makes no sense, and is entirely improbable.  But give yourself over to it, and the mood works.  …Until the literally cluttered and pointless conclusion.  (Seriously pointless, as in better without saying anything.)  But I survived, and I still liked the movie alright.