Given that the camera always seems to fall or get knocked into the perfect position to capture the craziness at hand, any vérité pretenses soon prove ridiculous. But it’s no more ridiculous than the plot, which incessantly wastes time trying to flesh out its characters, but barely bothers with building suspense.

One wishes it had spared us the remedial theorizing on media culture and artistic representation and license and less apologetically acted the part of a straight-up horror film.

Whatever suspense that might have been generated by the violently gory goings-on is dissipated by the sheer visual incomprehensibility.

The film isn't as smart as it thinks it is, and its characters are painfully generic.

The always beguiling Radha Mitchell can’t save this stunted procedural-horror combo.