Aaron, played by Patrick Brice, is a young man who is looking to get some quick cash, follows up on a discreet listing to film for a man in the woods for 8 hours. Aaron is immediately unnerved by the man's social ineptitude, but softened when he learns the man has a brain tumour, and the video is for his son who has yet to be born. After a day of hiking and bonding with the man known as Josef who is played by Mark Duplass, Aaron agrees to sit down for a drink before heading home. During this meeting, Josef admits to raping his wife when posing as a burglar in a wolf mask. This prompts Aaron to look for his keys, and finds them to be gone. Drugging Josef, Aaron receives a call from Josef's sister, whose name was used for the story about Josef's wife, and she tells Aaron definitively that Josef is mentally unwell. Aaron attempts to leave but is blocked by the now awoken Josef, who runs down to don the wolf mask and block the door, growling at Aaron. We get a fake-out cut, assuming Aaron has been chopped up and Josef is burying him, we find out this is actually Aaron recording this video Josef sent him. Josef continues sending videos, progressively distressing Aaron until he agrees to meet Josef at the lake to end the stalking once and for all. We see Josef approach behind Aaron sitting on a bench, again putting on the mask, before killing Aaron with an axe. At this point, the shot cuts away in the same way it did when we assumed Aaron was chopped up, but now to Josef, who seems almost sexually excited with the new video that he adds to a closet filled to the brim with tapes with different names written on them, the movie ending with Josef (now going by Bill) accepting another appointment to film him for a day.

The film did a good job during the end of the first, and into the second act, with Joseph and Aaron venturing into the woods, them both seeming to bond during this trip.

The dialogue was consistently creepy from Joseph without giving too much away about his true intentions and mental instability. It genuinely felt like a man who just did not understand social interactions well, and the backstory of his brain tumour felt like everything was coming together cohesively.

The "Found-Footage" style of filming was used, and while I generally am not a fan of this kind of story mechanic, it never felt overly unrealistic, even if there are some scenes were the camera being out didn't make sense. It was used particularly well with Aaron lying about turning off the camera when Josef is confessing to raping his own wife, as we don't need to see Aaron's reaction or Josef's face. We know by now how these characters would react to this, and so instead of seeing it, we feel it, as if we were there with them.

The overall shots and cuts were fine. A few times a cut happened very sporadically when it didn't seem to fit the scene, such as in Josef's first introduction. I understand that jump cuts in horror can help the scene feel chaotic but it wasn't a chaotic scene, and Joseph's natural creepiness was doing just fine to disturb me.

The story seemed to discard a lot of good faith it had brought in by the third act. By going back on the understanding of Josef's character, I felt the movie lost a lot of what was keeping me invested. Josef is a man who is having to face the fact he will never see his son, he is having to face the fact he is going to die soon, and with this, he is also losing himself by forgetting things about his family and his past. But he actually isn't facing any of these problems. They are all illusions to trick Aaron. The scene where the camera is covered, and so we are forced to sit in this darkness while he explains his marital problems leading to the assault of his wife is genuinely terrifying. We as the audience are trapped much like how Aaron would feel in this scene, even before he realises he is literally trapped. But then we learn this is all a lie. A story crafted by Josef for some unexplainable reason to scare this man he has captured.

The next problem is that the movie now goes on for a long time after this, and really just feels like we are being suspended in the story. We don't learn anything about the characters after the first video, we don't really have any progression. It just has some small scenes with Aaron being panicked, and Josef being a stalker. I didn't feel like any of it was necessary or held any value. The scene where Aaron is presumed dead but turns out he isn't is cool, and the reflection of that happening when he really is dead is a good use of repetition, but everything that happens between Aaron watching the first video, and going to meet Josef at the lake just feels like filler to me.

There is a little plot hole I really don't understand concerning Josef's sister calling. Aaron picks up the phone and she asks if it is Josef, good so far, and when it isn't she tries to get Aaron to leave, still makes sense. However at the end of the movie Joseph uses a fake name (Bill) to place the next appointment. Why did he not use a fake name for Aaron? Well, maybe this was his first kill, and he didn't need to use a fake name because he is 1 of a million Joes in the world? Fair point, but this isn't his first kill. He has a closet full of them. Well then maybe Josef isn't his real name? Well no because then who is this woman calling for Josef? How does she know his fake name? Why would she pose as his sister? Any way I look at it it fails to make sense to me and further showed me they didn't know how to tie up the ending.

Finally, there are a few scenes that don't make sense to be filmed. Why did Aaron bring the camera with him for the phone call? How did he expect not to get caught by Josef for filming the confession? He is obviously giving him what was recorded at the end, so how does he expect to get away with that? Why didn't Aaron look at his camera's film from the night Josef cut his hair? Or when Josef was in his doorway before jumping away to hide? Those last two really feel sloppy to me, as there is no point for Aaron to be recording what is going on if he isn't watching back the recordings.

Yes other things don't make perfect sense like the police failing to do anything when Aaron literally has the guy on tape, or the fact Aaron actually went to go see Josef at the lake, but these are relatively minor and I don't think really take much away from the movie. Every horror movie has the protagonist do dumb stuff.

The film was alright. In my opinion the real horror came from an already socially inept man becoming less and less like himself as cancer tore at his brain, and his disturbing and unnatural relationship with his wife, but then the movie took all that back, and gave us a random crazy stalker who likes recording people dying. If you frequently watch movies about random crazy stalkers that like recording people dying then I don't think you will have any problem enjoying this movie, but to me it feels like Patrick Brice and Mark Duplass, who together directed, produced, wrote, and starred in the movie, had a strong idea for the beginning, but seemed to fall short in how they wanted to end the story. Despite that, it does succeed relatively well in giving off a creepy vibe, and I did enjoy watching it.