I’ve never been a huge fan of found footage. Sure, there are some exceptions, like Cloverfield and Paranormal Activity, but as I’ve said before, I think the format is usually more of a gimmick than anything else. However, my feelings towards it have started to change recently. After watching Hostile Dimensions, Invoking Yell, and V/H/S Beyond in a fairly short time frame, I’ve found myself looking forward to these movies more than I used to, and Puzzle Box continued that trend. When I first heard about this film, it immediately piqued my interest, and I became genuinely excited to check it out. I couldn’t wait to see how it would compare to those other movies I mentioned, so I requested a screener as soon as I got the chance.

Puzzle Box was written and directed by Jack Dignan, and it stars Kaitlyn Boyé, Laneikka Denne, and Cassandre Girard. In the film, Kait is a drug addict who’s trying her best to get clean. She’s been in rehab multiple times, but now, she wants to do it the old-fashioned way. She and her sister Olivia have rented an isolated house in the woods, and she’s going to force herself to get over her addiction.

However, immediately after the women arrive, things start to go awry. It starts when they can’t find the key to the front door, and it soon escalates into an all-out fight for their lives. When night falls, they learn that they’re staying in a fantastical house of horrors, and it seems like there’s no escape.

Going into Puzzle Box, I suspected it would be a slow burn a la The Blair Witch Project and Frogman, but I was wrong. Sure, this movie doesn’t drop you right in the middle of its supernatural nightmare, but the horror kicks in relatively quickly. We don’t get nearly as much character development as we do in a lot of other films, so Puzzle Box has to make the most of its relatively fright-free first act.

And the movie almost pulls it off. The two lead actresses, Kaitlyn Boyé and Laneikka Denne, are excellent as Kait and Olivia, and they have great chemistry together. Sometimes their relationship is really sweet, and other times they clash, but no matter what these women do, they always feel like family.

Unfortunately, though, Puzzle Box doesn’t know what to do with these fun characters. Soon after Kait and Olivia find the key and make it inside the house, they start fighting. Despite Olivia’s request that the place be free of drugs or alcohol, the owners left their guests a bottle of wine, and Olivia wants to pour it down the drain.

Kait disagrees and says she’s not an alcoholic, but her sister insists, citing an incident from Kait’s past. And from there, all hell breaks loose. They start yelling and screaming at each other, and while your mileage may vary, I wasn’t a fan of this new development. It’s just not fun to watch these characters be at each other’s throats, so that really put a dent in my enjoyment of the film.

Thankfully though, Puzzle Box unleashes the horror before this sibling squabble gets too out of hand, and at first, it’s quite effective. Writer/director Jack Dignan does a good job of exploiting the eeriness inherent in a dark, isolated house in the middle of the night, and the found-footage format adds to the vibe by giving you a first-person perspective. You feel like you’re experiencing the story yourself, not just watching it on a screen, so if this is something you’d be afraid of in real life, it’s almost guaranteed to creep you out.

Then, when we get our first real scare, it’s excellent, and when that fright comes back for an encore, it’s still awesome. But then we see it again…and again…and again, and it’s pretty much all downhill from here. For the rest of the movie’s runtime, about 95% of the horror is just that same exact scare repeated over and over in slightly different ways, and after the fourth time or so, it just becomes played out.

There’s even a short stretch when you think Puzzle Box is finally ready to move on and try something different, but after that all-too-brief respite, the film reverts to its old tricks (or, more accurately, its old trick, singular) once again. It’s like a person who keeps going back to the same joke again and again after it stops being funny, and even though this isn’t comedy, the effect is the same.

It’s a frustrating experience that makes you long for the credits, and it all leads to a mind-bending finale that’s just as much of a mixed bag as everything that came before it. On the one hand, it turns the story into a surprisingly apt metaphor for Kait’s more down-to-earth struggles, but on the other hand, it leaves you with some big questions, and not in a good way.

I can’t get into specifics without spoiling the ending, but I can say that the explanation for all these strange events doesn’t entirely add up. I love ambiguous horror just as much as anybody (and we get plenty of it here!), but there’s one particular detail that seems out of place. It’s not what we’d expect given the truth behind this house of horrors, so the movie doesn’t wrap up in a satisfying manner.

That head-scratching conclusion is the rotten cherry on top of this found-footage letdown, so I’m sad to report that I wouldn’t recommend Puzzle Box. Sure, it has a few redeeming qualities, like the strong lead performances and some good scares, but they’re not nearly enough to outweigh the film’s flaws. The boringly repetitive horror alone is enough to garner a thumbs down from me, and when you combine it with the weak character work and the disappointing ending, you get a movie that, in my opinion, isn’t worth your time.