I'll be a departure from a good number of reviewers and spare the synopsis. It's at the top of the page, for Christ's sake.

The direction was fairly minimal but I thought effective. An entire film shot in booths has its limits. With a couple of exceptions, I also didn't think the performances were that bad, especially given what little they had to play off of. Again, the limits that have to be dealt with given the approach.

I liked the premise, but it needs to come together at the end to be satisfying, and I don't think it really got there. I'm not saying you have to LIKE the resolution, but you do have to at least recognize it as the culmination of every bread crumb that's been laid before you, and there was too much that fell short.

The movie is obviously all dialogue, but surprisingly little of that dialogue actually contributed to the story. I recognize that maybe it was revelatory to some degree as to the mechanics of each character, but even as you watch it you know it's not really fleshing out the mystery in any substantive way. It's just padding. So, you're basically listening to a handful of archetypes blather on like any typical student does (to the ear of an actual adult). I'm guessing this may have first been done as a 30-minute student film with 3-4 fewer characters.

There has been mention of the anti-male talking points. Those were minimal, but once the first one hit, it took up a chair in the back of my mind and never really went away, right up through the false credits which included the final shot at men. It made it extra delicious that this shot not only was a shade off of the proper use of the term "derivative" to describe male producers, but it was misspelled as well. :)

If this were a typical indie horror pic of this quality, I'd recommend it as ambient noise while you're busying yourself with other things. But this one requires that you sit and actively listen to it, so it is held to a higher level before it can get a nod.

It's not garbage. If you're really interested in this approach to storytelling, give it a try. Maybe you'll get more out of it than I did. But I'm guessing you'll likely click out of it a little disappointed.

Take care.

First, lets get right to it: the ENTIRE movie takes place in a confession booth. Remember that movie Phone Booth? Now, imagine that the only camera was inside the booth and you never saw the outside world. Doesn't that sound like an awesome movie? No??? Well the creators of this apparently though it would be a good idea. While movies like Unfriended: Dark Web and the V/H/S series experiment with new ways to make the Found Footage style dynamic and interesting, Confessional goes for the opposite approach- removing any and all potential the medium has and delivering one of the absolute most barebones "films" in history. I'm extremely hesitant to even call this a film when it fact it's more like simply "Dialogue: The Movie".

Anyhow, since they didn't spend any money on the production of this movie hopefully they spent it on the story? Nope. This comes across as a 13-16yr olds revenge fantasy wet dream. The movie revolves around the character of Amelia who is apparently one small step away from Jesus- all the characters seem to idolize her to the level of a bad fanfic. Everyone loves her the most and is mad at so & so for falling short of loving her enough, or...something. The narrator is forcing everyone to confess and this narrator feels like a blatant and highly self-congratulatory self-insert. The characters are all cardboard cutout level 1-D (macho jock guy, a55hole alt right guy, crazy loner girl, guys roommate, someone's girlfriend, someone else's girlfriend) and act in completely unrealistic ways. They all let someone they didn't know all that well tape their "biggest regret"? Two people meet up and within seconds have sex in the booth? A guy has no reservations about getting sxcked off through a glory hole in the booth? Yes, totally believable things people would do, especially when being in a room watched/filmed by an unknown person! Unsurprisingly, the overall story is pretty straight-forward, generic teen/college drama. Everyone's "confession" is easily guessable within the first few minutes of them talking. Someone is gay, someone is cheating, someone was raped at a party...cornerstones of teen drama and absolutely no curveballs. They even go a step further and make it offensively dumb with the addition of 1 dimensional, heavy-handed, cartoonish "woke" stuff. The problem is that when you include very base-level woke stuff in a movie this bad/stupid, it makes people equate progressive ideas with a stupid ass movie of caricatures shoving their "woke" ideas upon the viewer and therefore not take them seriously. It would be much more effective if the movie was compelling and intelligently brought up progressive ideas in a way that accurately conveyed their seriousness. Additionally, this movie commits the cardinal sin of believing that "convoluted" is synonymous with deep/complex/unpredictable/smart. The movie continually cuts back and forth between the characters, giving them just enough time to talk without saying anything and then cutting away right when they might divulge some plot progressing information. This is done to artificially extend the rather shallow story and give the impression that the confession is going to be much more shocking than it actually is. It takes forever to get anywhere and you'll be constantly bored considering there is no actual visual stimuli- thereby forcing the movie to foolishly rely solely on its obtuse, overly confusing dialogue and storytelling. If you're going to reduce a movie to only the writing, than the writing needs to be exceptionally strong! Anyway, that's more than enough about this one. Terrible idea for a movie style; really low level, predictable writing; 1 dimensional, uninteresting characters; trite twist and complete lack of payoff. If I hadn't already cancelled my Shudder account than I would have after seeing this.