Found footage can be hit-or-miss at the best of times, but the industry’s obsession with the gimmick saw it applied to countless other genres once it had been proven beyond any doubt it was a lucrative goldmine in the realm of horror. While Earth to Echo may have been fairly popular, it’s still one of the worst examples of the shaky-cam phenomenon utilized in an otherwise-decent movie.
Josh Trank’s excellent Chronicle showed how the handheld format could be translated to the sci-fi/fantasy space without ever being distracting or feeling pointless, whereas Dave Green’s adolescent adventure would have been a vastly superior work of cinema had it been shot as a standard narrative feature.
It did manage to earn almost $45 million at the box office on a $13 million budget, though, even if respective Rotten Tomatoes scores of 50 and 47 percent are about as average as it comes. There are still a hardy number of backers out there who couldn’t get enough of the family-friendly intergalactic escapade, in fairness, leading to a Reddit thread lamenting the fact it never got any sequels.
There was even a post-credits scene teasing that exact possibility after the story following a group of childhood friends tracing a mysterious code to an extraterrestrial interloper had rounded out, but it wasn’t to be. There were whispers for a hot minute before it came to nothing in the end, something that evidently stings for those who have a soft spot for what’s essentially (and not very opaquely) a 21st Century update on E.T. almost beat-for-beat.