Linbeymusol Wonderful character development!

Clevercell Very disappointing...

Abbigail Bush what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Tayyab Torres Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

lewiskendell I was completely fascinated with LARPers after seeing the excellent Darkon. Once I learned that there was another documentary about the subject, I wasted no time tracking it down and watching it. Unfortunately, Monster Camp is inferior to Darkon in every way. Even hardcore fans of documentaries may choose to skip this one.A documentary is only as good as its subject matter, and Monster Camp simply fails in this regard. I'm not a judgmental person. I liked all the colorful people that Darkon focused on. There lives were interesting for the most part, and I empathized or identified to a degree with all of them. For the most part they were normal people. Monster Camp, on the other hand...I hate to say this, but there was very little to like about the participants of Nero Seattle. They weren't endearing or quirky. Mostly, they were just plain weird. The movie makers made no attempt to portray them as three-dimensional individuals. They all came off as losers or super-geeks who had nothing in their lives except their monthly hobby. And I hate to see people depicted in such a negative way. There's no incentive to get emotionally involved in Monster Camp. Darkon was so well made, that everything that was important to its subjects soon became important to the viewer. All I feel after watching Monster Camp is that most of those people would benefit from focusing more of their attention on the real world.In a nutshell, I recommend Darkon to everyone and Monster Camp to no one.

jfgibson73 This was a fun documentary that shows a group of people playing a live action role playing experience (LARP for short). It is like Dungeons and Dragons acted out with real people playing each characters. Some people are the adventurers trying to get through the story, and some people play the monsters they have to fight and kill to move forward. It's called Monster Camp because that is like the base of operations where the people who are putting it on work out of. The owner of the camp comes across as being very stressed by the responsibilities of running the game, and actually ends up selling the company (NERO). Apparently, it is a lot of work coordinating everything for the three or four days that the customers stay to play. It was hard to understand exactly how the game works, or what the story is behind it (I never was sure what the players were trying to accomplish), but they do explain that characters get killed in battle when they get hit by weapons a certain number of times. Whenever one player hits another with their foam weapon, they call out a number, which is the amount of damage they can do. When a player gets hit enough times to equal the number set on their character, they die, although they can be resurrected back into the game. The movie lets you get to know a little bit about some of the players and some of the people putting the camp on. It was an interesting look into an experience I would probably never otherwise have seen. It would be interesting to see a follow up documentary on the camp. I would even watch another movie about a different group, in hopes that it would be as well made and interesting as this one.

Jordan Another home run for the crew that brought you Freedom State.This movie is edited beautifully to take you on a constant ride where you question what is "acceptable" behavior for adults and what is not. I would say that the average person comes into this movie with an initial impression of "they spend their time doing what?" However, the film is crafted to make you question why there must be a solid line between reality in fiction and if NERO, while strange, is really something that adults "shouldn't do because it isn't 'healthy'." The film stays true to it's documentary form.I watched this film with a NERO player "outlier" in the sense that he has what most players do not ( a steady job, lots of education, is married with a daughter, and yet was still very involved in the game )I think his words speak louder than mine when he said that this film actively portrays the entire gamut of most NERO players, regardless of location. The film makes you reconsider the Toys-R-US catch phrase, "I don't want to grow up" and eventually made me come to the conclusion that maybe a good balance of reality and fantasy is not only healthy, but can be quite fun too.

wulfstand Last nite at San Jose Cinequest. A very interesting film about folks in Live Action RolePlaying and how the hobby has defined or even taken over their life. The film covers the romantic angle too, with couples both meeting and breaking up over "in game" issues. Altho the film is about "L.A.R.P." is could well be about SCA, Renfaire, D&D or even Massive Multiplayer Online games. It touches a bit on that last, with a couple of the guys in the film admitting they spend over 40 hours a week playing WOW. Of course a film about slackers playing computer games would be a tad boring.What I particularly like is the balance shown by the film-makers. They show the good and the bad, with no apparent bias. Intelligent and thought-provoking, with a number of very funny moments and a few poignant ones too.