eradaningol

This movie is a sequence of barely connected vignettes about life in Russian-occupied east of Ukraine, and just how horrific and grotesque it is to live there at the moment. It captures all of the details flawlessly - it sometimes is shot for shot live-action version of existing videos on Youtube, but with real actors. Donbass is depressing as hell but so is the existence in that region, so it is well deserving of many awards that this movie received.

This movie plays like a less scary riff on Blair Witch and its sequels. Story involves teenagers Mark and Maya that visit Lysa Gora - a remote park in Kyiv which is known to have some paranormal association to it - because that is where Maya's mother went missing some years ago. They eventually get lost and after some wandering learn what is going on in the park and why exactly Maya's mother disappeared. Movie is barely feature long, and not that scary compared to recent The Blair Witch, but has some charm to it, due to the fact that it was shot on location, and camera does not forget to move around. There is not much gore and no nudity so if it was rated by MPAA, I can assume it would be PG-13 due to some violence.

*SPOILERS* As is generally the case with Eastern European horror, bad guys are pagan worshippers that dabble in human sacrifice, and have some elaborate structure to their coven. There is a weird jump cut very late in the movie, that moves story one year later, and its conclusion is not very satisfactory.