Found Footage: The Making of the Patterson Project

Chase Bradner wants to be an indie auteur, but his first movie will be a rip-off of The Blair Witch Project and the “Patterson-Gimlin” footage you might remember seeing on old In Search of… episodes. That is assuming he manages to finish it. The outlook is questionable, because all the usual production issues that plague indies will be compounded by strange demonic forces in Max Tzannes’ Found Footage: The Making of the Patterson Project, which opens today in theaters.

French documentarian Rochelle Dupont had vastly more experience than Bradner. Neverthelss, she filmed behind-the-scenes on his production of The Patterson Project, for a series on DIY filmmaking. That is how viewers get to see the chaos that unfolds.

Frankly, the whole production is rather iffy from the start. Frank Eikleberry agreed to produce the film, after hiring Bradner to shoot his furniture store commercials. However, it seems Eikleberry intends to generously skim from the investment he solicits from the elderly and addled Betsy Hannigan, whose only condition is the mandatory casting of her favorite actor, Alan Rickman. Sadly, Rickman is obviously dead, so Bradner must get creative.

Somehow, Bradner starts shooting in their primary location, a time-share cabin that his girlfriend (and assistant director) Natalie Sayers’ parents are not currently scheduled to use. Rather ill-advisedly, the crew stows their gear in the satanic shrine in the cellar, which apparently frees a demon to unleash havoc during the shoot. Sayers and the production assistant, Peter Wallsnacky largely accept the supernatural source of their headaches, but Bradner and Eikleberry remain seriously in denial.

It takes a while for this horror-comedy to get to the horror, but when it does, it really starts to click. The backstage demonic shenanigans captured by Dupont’s crew are pleasantly creepy and the film-making chaos grows funnier as the progresses.

Brennan Keel Cook’s portrayal of Bradner sounds somewhat inspired by Mark Borchardt, which makes sense. Erika Vetter and Chen Tang develop surprisingly winning chemistry as Sayers and Mitchell Chang (Bradner’s best friend and associate producer), who become an item amid the unfolding horrors. Bizarrely, Del Alan Murphy lands a pretty good song as Wallsnacky. Plus, Dean Cameron is hilariously sleazy as Eikleberry.

Ironically, Tzannes and co-screenwriter David San Miguel stay truer to the found footage conceit than most cheating found footage pretenders. As a result, the film is a horror-comedy that should satisfy horror fans, for a change, which might be why the horror filmmaking collective Radio Silence (the team behind Abigail and Ready or Not), signed on as executive producers. Recommended for genre fans, Found Footage: The Making of the Patterson Project is now showing at the Kent Theater in Brooklyn.