HOOKED UP is a found footage horror movie which tells the story of two young American men who travel to Barcelona, mainly to help one of them overcome a painful breakup. There, they meet a couple girls with whom they hook up, and then trouble begins for them that is way beyond what they could have imagined.
This movie is bound to turn off a lot of people right from the start. It opens with a scene featuring a character who vomits into a toilet that looks like the actor really is vomiting. One main character is annoyingly obnoxious, the other annoyingly whiny. There is quite a bit of locker room-like talk about the purpose of the trip, and so on. In short, there is a lot of crudeness in this movie.
If, by the time the characters have hooked up, you are not sufficiently offended to stop watching, then you will be treated to an extended fast-paced and high-energy cat-and-mouse game inside an old barricaded building for the remainder of the running time.
I believe the secret to enjoying something like this is to regard it not as a movie experience, but as a thrill ride. The first-person perspective makes it easy to do so; just sit back, forget about character development (though there are character arcs, in fact they go in opposite directions for the two protagonists), plot (though there is at least the outline of a plot which connects present events to the past) or other formalities and take it all in as if you were right there.
Not everyone can do this, but if you can, you will likely find the movie to be a lot of fun.
I love fast-paced found footage horror movies, so this was right up my alley. A few of the scenes reminded me of REC (2007) which, incidentally, is also set in Barcelona. However that work has a much higher caliber than this, in fact I consider it to be possibly the best found footage horror movie ever made.
A thematically similar film is HOSTEL (2005), but the basic plot outline reminds me of DASHCAM (2021) which also involves a fast-paced bonkers cat and mouse game involving at least one exceedingly obnoxious character for the majority of its short duration.
Given the movie's crudeness and lack of ambition to be much more than a thrill ride, it is not surprising that it got heavily panned.
One issue I'd like to address is the quality of the production design/cinematography. It seems to me that those who have criticized it for being amateurish have not seen very many found footage films. Having seen over 150 of these, I can confidently say that the movie is well above average for this genre in respect to both.
So, if you can get past the crudeness and turn your brain off while watching, you might find this quite enjoyable.