DVD Review: Final Entries: The Video Diary Of Madi O

By Brad Henderson

What is the worst film you have ever seen? I’ve seen many terrible films in my day but I usually don’t badmouth them because I don’t like to give things negative publicity. Why should *I* determine if someone watches or doesn’t watch a film? Final Entries: The Video Diary Of Madi O was one of the worst films that I’ve seen but that all changed after I found out a few interesting things.

One of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to movies is when people say “nothing happened.” I fight that case a lot because if people (general public) don’t have jump scares every five minutes or explosions, they think the movie is boring and that isn’t the case at all. Some films depend more on the story and characters scaring you rather than someone jumping out or an upset ghost throwing people around the room. In Final Entries: The Video Diary Of Madi O nothing really happens until the last 10 minutes. Literally.

First off, I didn’t like the film at all. It felt extremely amateur for a found footage film as well as just plain boring. Two girls are runaways and they have a camera in a vacant house. They play around and make jokes and are extremely annoying. It felt like the “filmmaker” gave the girls the camera and told them to play around for an hour doing “girl” stuff.

The other thing that bothered me was that even the story wasn’t leading up to anything. These girls go into the woods and a vacant house and you would think they would at least hear something or see something creepy off and on but they don’t.

I know I’m not talking you into this film at all but I will get there eventually . . .

After the film was over I couldn’t believe it was even made or being distributed. I picked up the case and looked at the back and no one was listed at all. At all. No cast, no crew, no producer, writer, or director. Nothing. I thought this was very odd so I got on IMDb and checked. Nothing again. Just the character name of one of the girls and that’s it: Madi O. Now, I was really wondering if the filmmakers were hiding from this project and wanted nothing to do with it. So I contacted Wild Eye Releasing and simply asked, “What the hell is up with this film? No cast, no crew? What is going on?”

Yeah, then this happened:

I don’t think any of this is true but damn, it is interesting.

Wild Eye Releasing emailed me back and told me the filmmaker says the footage is real. Then I was forwarded a page dedicated to one of the girls that is missing, an online petition on trying to have the film stopped from being released, a Facebook account, a Twitter account, and a couple other sites about this missing girl. The entries go back to 2012. Apparently this was filmed in New Zealand (where the girls and the filmmaker are from). According to the numerous sites that exist, the film has already been banned in New Zealand and there are “many” who want the film stopped.

Now obviously this was all created by the filmmaker. That’s what I’m mostly leaning towards, but I’m also having a hard time believing that the filmmaker started creating all these sites and petitions a couple of years before the film was released. Sure, he could be prepared to make it look more real and have started that a while ago, however, why not promote the film being real?

The only thing that the film indicates is that the footage is from the New Zealand police department. Nowhere else does it say that this film is real or based on any true events, so I’m obviously led to believe it is all bullshit. There are certain things in the film that suggest it could be real, but with the events that take place, I can almost solidify that this is all a hoax.

Final Entries: The Video Diary of Madi O was released on November 18 by Wild Eye Releasing.