Director: The PAZ Brothers
Writer: The PAZ Brothers (Screenplay)
Starring: Yael Grobglas, Yon Tumarkin, Danielle Jadelyn, Tom Graziani, Sarel Piterman, Howard Rypp
Plot: When a couple of American young adults fly to Israel to visit the city of Jerusalem, a biblical nightmare falls upon the city
There may be spoilers the rest of the review
Verdict: Great Concept, Annoying Shaky Cam
Story: JeruZalem starts as we learn about the three entrances to Hell, one in the desert, one in the ocean and one in Jerusalem, now they have found one for real.
We move onto meet Sarah Pullman (Jadelyn) who has just received a pair of eye-sense glasses for her trip away with her best friend Rachel Klein (Grobglas). This holiday will help Sarah get over the personal lose her family have suffered through. When the friends meet Kevin (Tumarkin) the plans change from Tel Aviv and the three head to Jerusalem. As we see the two girls enjoying the party life through annoying shaking cam because of the glasses Sarah is wearing throughout.
So, after 50 minutes the girls find themselves in the middle of a terrorist attack on the city and the residents need to leave as fast as possible as the city is under attack from monstrous creatures from hell.
Thoughts on JeruZalem
Characters/Performance – Sarah is traveling with her best friend to help her recover from the death f her brother, we don’t actually learn much more about her other than she wears the annoying shaky cam. Rachel is the best friend who wants to party and that is all we learn about her character. Kevin has been studying different religions and gets scared first, that is his character. As you can tell here we don’t get much development in our characters.
Performance wise, well with bad characters comes poor performances because the stars just don’t have anything to work with when it comes to making us care about the characters involved.
Story – The story takes about 45 minutes before we get close to the horror part, yes that long and then it falls into the lets run from monsters while slowly getting picked off as we watch in shaky cam mode. I will praise the idea behind this film as I do think it is an excellent concept but I don’t think found footage works for it.
Horror – The horror takes a while to get going, but as soon as it does we get a look at what could be considered hell.
Settings – Having the film set in Jerusalem works because the films story is based on a term from the bibles of the world.
Special Effects – The effects do look good but are slightly too good for found footage films.
Final Thoughts – I did like the concept behind this film and I am a fan of found footage, but this film could have easily been a better non-found footage film that didn’t get annoying sucking us out of the story.
Overall: Great concept that loses everything when it comes to the found footage angle.
Rating
