Hunting Matthew Nichols

When the original Blair Witch Project released, it inspired teenaged Matthew Nichols and his friend Jordan Reimer to make their own DIY horror movies. Judging by the small army of found footage films reviewed here, they were clearly not the only ones. Unfortunately, instead of earning a quick pay day, they fell into a ravine and died. At least that is what the provincial Vancouver Island police say, but they never discovered the bodies. Two decades later, his sister Tara and a documentary film crew set out to uncover their true fate. In the process, they produce another found footage horror movie: Markian Tarasiuk’s independently produced and released Hunting Matthew Nichols, which releases today in theaters.

Way up in northern Vancouver, there isn’t much for teens to do except watch horror movies and go hiking. Consequently, everyone hoped Nichols and Reimer would be found, considering how well they knew the woods (the Canadians call it “bush,” but same difference). Yet, the police only recovered Nichols’ video camera.

Tara Nichols wants answers and director Markian Tarasiuk and cameraman Ryan Alexander McDonald—playing themselves—want to help her at least reach some closure. Regardless, they get some pretty good footage when they discover the missing teens were preoccupied with the local not-so-urban legend of Roy McKenzie, a reputed cult leader, who may or may not have eaten the residents of his commune. McKenzie can definitely hang with the Blair Witch. Nichols and Reimer thought so too, judging from the totem the police turn over to his sister.

There is no getting around the fact Tarasiuk’s film looks and plays very much like Chris Stuckmann’s Shelby Oaks, but the Roy McKenzie lore helps somewhat set it apart. It also has some of the best performances you will find in the found footage sub-genre. Miranda MacDougall shows potential star-power as Tara Nichols.

Man Finds Tape: Found Footage in Texas

In Larkin, Texas, social life largely revolves around the church and the barbecue roadhouse. It is about as red as the meat proprietor Winston Boon serves up, but this film still invites sympathy for the community. Something sinister has been secretly preying on the town for years. A brother and sister struggle to expose the bizarre truth in Paul Gandersman & Peter S. Hall’s Man Finds Tape, which releases this Friday in theaters and on-demand.

Believe it or not, the director-screenwriters breathe new life into the found footage subgenre, precisely by embracing its limitations. Lucas Page is a notorious paranormal influencer, who built a massive following with the mysterious videos of his childhood an unknown someone reportedly delivered to him. The first allegedly depicts a shadowy figure standing over him while he innocently slept. Ominously, it clearly was not his parents.

Page would later admit he faked the subsequent tapes in hopes of drawing out the mysterious party. Consequently, his sister Lynn is skeptical when Lucas video-calls, asking her to watch more of his dubious footage. However, when he passes out mid-call, she reluctantly returns to Larkin, out of concern.

Having left town as a teenager, after the untimely deaths of their parents, Ms. Page seems immune to whatever plagues the locals. Clearly, it is not just her brother. Her former bestie (and Lucas’s on-again-off-again girlfriend) Wendy Parker willing goes on-the-record and on-camera to discusses her experiences. Boon also sits for a few interviews, but he is far less willing to face the creepy phenomenon. However, a strange outsider (conveniently referred to as “The Stranger”) obviously understands what is happening, but he clearly has not come to Larkin with altruistic motives.

Man Finds Tape works so well because it uses our disbelief against us, jujitsu-like. As the primary narrating voice, Lynn Page constantly expresses skepticism. Essentially, she even invites the audience to compare her ostensive film to presumed hoaxes, like the Patterson-Gimlin Big Foot tape. The horror itself is also initially hard to define. While it inspires fear and paranoia, it also takes on subtly Lovecraftian overtones.

Gandersman and Hall create a potent atmosphere of dread, which steadily escalates. Even though Rev. Endicott Carr is unambiguously implicated in the uncanny skullduggery afoot, Man Finds Tape still feels highly sympathetic to its small Texas setting.

In Our Blood: Found Footage Horror Worth Finding

Emily Wyland should leave family reunions to the Waltons and awkward family documentaries to Sarah Polley. Instead, she drags her camera guy down to record her homecoming in Las Cruces, New Mexico with her former (hopefully) junky mother Sam. Unfortunately, they quickly suspect some sinister horror movie business is afoot, preying on the meth gangs and illegal aliens whose deaths wouldn’t be reported. It is not a great advertisement for Las Cruces tourism but the techniques of found footage horror are unusually well-executed in Pedro Kos’s In Our Blood, which opens today in theaters.

It had been years since Wyland last saw her mother. Their attempt at Thanksgiving dinner is not exactly a success either. However, Sam volunteers to make a long, cryptic “confession” on-camera. She certainly seems to feel guilty about something. Wyland hopes to extract more specifics the next day, when they arrange to visit the homeless shelter where her mom volunteers, but her mother no-shows. There are also no signs of her at home.

As they investigate her disappearance, Wyland and her creeped out cameraman Danny Martinez start to suspect it involves the local biker drug-gang, several of her aging hipster artist colony friends, and paranoid schizophrenic client of the homeless shelter.

Before long, they are deep in the trust-no-one horror-conspiracy weeds. It is definitely bad, but somehow Kos and screenwriter Mallory Westfall will probably manage to surprise a lot of experienced genre fans when they finally reveal the wizard behind the curtain.

The found footage conceit also really, really works for this film. Maybe there are a few times when you just have to accept that Wyland was also shooting footage, but that is relatively easy to look past, compared to the cheating you can see in most of its less ambitious sub-genre brethren.

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.

Project MKHEXE, on Screambox

Most of the conspiracy theories involving the CIA are complete nonsense. Sadly, they have proved so bad at keeping their secrets, most of the crazy stuff they get blamed for would have been exposed long ago by “whistle-blowers” or deep-cover moles. After all, we know all about Project MK Ultra. MKEXE is sort of like that embarrassing project cranked up to eleven. Yet, somehow, the CIA kept this one secret. Apparently, they had a lot of help from a shadowy someone or something in director-screenwriter Gerald Robert Waddell’s Project MKHEXE, which premieres today on Screambox.

“Freelance” photographer-filmmaker Tim Wilson was always the unstable one. That is why he took his younger brother Sean’s suicide so hard. Compounding the guilt, he ignored his brother’s bizarrely unhinged final call the night he died. Hoping to make sense of it all, he unlocks Sean’s fun and steps through the looking glass, into his conspiracy theory obsessions. He seemed to be researching MKEXE, which was apparently another mind-control experiment, but with almost supernatural overtones.

Whatever it is, it covers its tracks. In fact, as soon as the Brother Tim starts cataloging Brother Sean’s evidence, it mysteriously disappears. Even the tormenting voice message deletes itself. It sounds crazy, but Tim’s not-quite girlfriend Nicole saw enough to agree to help his brother investigate further—or maybe she is just prospecting for a good story. Regardless, their resulting “documentary” became a notoriously lost item of internet lore, somehow preserved here for your viewing pleasure, according to Waddell’s found footage gimmick.

In a way, MKHEXE represents an unusually effective found footage film, but not because it is scary. Frankly, this is a profoundly sad film that illustrates the destructive power of the obsessive conspiratorial mindset. It also viscerally shows how tragedy and trauma can poison a family. Waddell presents a highly distinctive vision, but it is not an enjoyable viewing experience. It might just drive you to drink.

Nevertheless, Jennifer Lynn O’Hara and Dwayne Tarver are absolutely devastating as the brothers’ long-suffering parents. They are so believable and realistically down-to-earth, it is painful to watch them. Ignacyo Matynia and Will Jandro have plenty of good freak-outs as the brothers, but they do not connect emotionally the way their on-screen parents do.

Chateau: The No-Go Chateau

The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park is famous as one of the locations used for The Shining. Yet, it still regularly hosts weddings, so plans to turn the Chateau Haute Jaure into a wedding palace should hardly be hindered by its appearance in this small upstart horror movie, provided they do some serious work on the surrounding grounds. However, an influencer without influence has a hard time checking out when she tries to film a ghost-hunting video there in director-screenwriter Luke Genton’s Chateau, which releases Friday on VOD.

James has many reasons to hate her abusive mother, starting with her name. She has been working odd jobs to support her stay in Paris, leaving her sister to deal with their mother’s slow demise and funeral. She was hoping to find her fame and fortune on YouTube, but it has not happened yet. However, her roommate Dash has the brilliant idea to film inside the “No-Go Chateau,” which is notorious on the internet for alleged disappearances of those who visit.

Since the No-Go is still a private home, James must go undercover, as a temp maid sent by a cleaning service. It is a big property, so she will have a full day to dust and scrub, while the owner is in town. Since James is a skeptic, she invites Dash to join her, so he can “liven” things up, but viewers can tell from the shapes and shadows moving behind them that they are in for a long night.

Obviously, Chateau is like hundreds of previous ghost-chasing gone wrong found footage horror movies. However, Genton’s film has two things going for it that makes a world of difference. The first is the atmospheric Chateau Haute Jaure setting, which Genton fully capitalizes on. The second is his first-rate execution, which steadily builds tension and earns scares. Even though experienced horror viewers have been down this road numerous times before, they will still get caught up in the spookiness if it all.

Devon, on Screambox

If you know smart people, you write about smart people. If you are familiar with the associates of Jenni Farley, a.k.a. “JWoww” on The Jersey Shore, it rather follows that her characters make spectacularly bad decisions. To make matters worse, they appear in a horror movie. The found footage sub-genre finds its weakest premise yet in director-screenwriter-executive producer Farley’s Devon, which premieres tomorrow on Screambox.

First of all, Farley earns some credit for playing it straight. There is no big hair or cringy horniness in Devon. However, the internal logic is a mess. Supposedly, the well-heeled parents of the missing Devon (now 34 years of age, if still alive), contacted five desperate people, asking them to investigate and document (with the video cameras recording the footage to be found at a later date) the abandoned asylum where she was once committed.

Savvy viewers might be wondering what the anonymous parents hope to find in the crumbling, graffiti-tarred building and why didn’t they hire professional investigators in the first place? However, the not-so Fab Five never thought to ask. They just need money, for reasons that will mostly be revealed. As a result, Kat Rose, Jared Stevens, and Carly Carmichael are somewhat better delineated as characters than those in your average ultra-low budget found footage movie.

Allison Roberts, who we see struggling to explain herself during her in media res police interview, is kept mysterious for the sake of third acts surprises. That leaves William Edwards, whose shticky over-the-top diva behavior gets to be a lot.

V/H/S Beyond, on Shudder

Thanks to the collector market, they are making small-batch limited-runs of new VHS tapes again. That is good news for this franchise. In addition to the new appreciation of analog formats, there are also plenty of weird moldy old tapes to uncover out there. The really disturbing ones fuel the creation of urban legends and the Cadillac of found footage franchises. Aliens get into the act a little bit more this time, but all the V/H/S hallmarks remain present in V/H/S Beyond, which premieres this Friday on Shudder.

In a bit of a departure, the wrap-around segments, Jay Cheel’s “Abduction/Adduction” are a mockumentary, supposedly investigating alien encounters at a notorious California mansion. Some of the segments are so well done, it is disappointing to break away to a full chapter. Fittingly, Whitley Strieber gets a lot of deserved credit for establishing and popularizing (or whatever terms might be more fitting) the now familiar alien abduction tropes. Frankly, it would be fascinating to see Cheel (who helmed Shudder’s Cursed Films series) expand this into a full film.

By far, the scariest constituent film (or tape) is Jordan Downey’s “Stork,” intriguingly “based on artwork by Oleg Vdovenko.” The premise is simple, but lethally effective. An elite anti-crime police squad raids the squat house of a cult suspected of kidnapping infants. What they find is a horror show. This is the kind of found footage that is truly terrifying. The crack-house-style design makes viewers crave a tetanus booster and the camera work keeps you on high alert. Like many of Beyond’s instalments, “Stork” is not unlike several previous V/H/S contributions, but it sure works.

That is also true of Virat Pal’s “Dream Girl,” but to a lesser extent. Tara is a Bollywood idol, who shares a kinship with Hannah Fierman’s Lily the Demon from the original V/H/S (and a spin-off), as a group of paparazzi learn the hard way. In this case, the Bollywood setting helps distinguish it from its predecessors.

‘Live and Let Dive,” directed by Justin Martinez (the only returning V/H/S alumnus, from when he was part of the Radio Silence collaborative group) probably earns the honor of the film’s second best segment. In this case, a reluctant skydiver celebrates his birthday with his hard-partying friends, just as the aliens swope down from the skies to attack. The horrors start in the air and finish on the ground. Martinez fully capitalizes on the found footage genre’s potential for what-the-heckness, staging some wild alien attacks, that actually look great, thanks to the subgenres built-in low resolution requirements.

“Fur Babies” directed by Christian Long & Justin Long (the Apple commercial guy and his brother) is probably Beyond’s grossest, most disturbing component film. It also delivers the most satiric “bite,” skewering an annoying band of left-wing animal rights activists, plotting an undercover sting operation against home-based kennel. However, their hubris leads to horrific comeuppance. “Fur Babies” is rough, but it is the one fans will be talking about for years to come.

Late Night with the Devil

Unlike his successors, The Tonight Show during the Johnny Carson era really was a show for everyone. He regularly featured jazz musicians, like Buddy Rich and Joe Williams, as well as opera singers and classical musicians. It was hard to compete against his broadly based appeal, so his fictional second-place rival, Jack Delroy will try something desperate. Of course, horror fans know it will be a bad idea to invite a demonically possessed girl as a live studio guest, but he does it anyway in director-screenwriter-tandem Cameron & Colin Cairnes’s Late Night with the Devil, which opens in theaters this Friday.

In the 1970s, Delroy quickly became a strong second-place late night talk show host, but lately his show has been stagnating. Even the burst of sympathy that followed his beloved wife’s death was not enough to challenge Carson. Lately, the show has gotten somewhat Jerry Springer-ish. However, this special Halloween show will take it to a whole new level. In addition to Christou the psychic, Delroy has invited Lilly D’Abo, a girl who allegedly carries a demon inside her. Thanks to author and parapsychologist Dr. June Ross-Mitchell, she supposedly has control over the evil entity trying to possess her.

To add further stress, Carmichael Haig, formerly Carmichael the Conjurer, a former magician turned paranormal debunker (clearly inspired by James “The Amazing” Randi) is also invited to be the obnoxious voice of skepticism. Right, what could possibly go wrong?

Essentially, Late Night is a found footage film, showing the chaotic events as recorded by the show’s cameras, including the live feed during commercials. However, it does not feel like found footage. Instead, it is more like watching a “real” movie. The art and production direction are incredible. This is a crazy horror film, but it still manages to inspire nostalgia for the couch-sitting talk shows of the era. Delroy’s backstory, as a member of a reputed ritualistic “old boy’s” club adds even further dimensions of sinister intrigue.

Hell House LLC, Origins: The Carmichael Manor, on Shudder

Different house, same hell. All the scary stuff happening at the Abaddon Hotel was apparently related to the tragedy that occurred in this Rockland County mansion. Of course, a true crime podcaster decides it would be fun to stay there during her investigation. We can guess the results in screenwriter-director Stephen Cognetti’s not-exactly-a-prequel Hell House LLC, Origins: The Carmichael Manor, which premieres today on Shudder.

Margot Bentley is psyched to be staying in the Carmichael Manor, the scene of a notorious family killing in the late 1980s. Rebecca Vickers, her more responsible partner in life and true-crime, is less excited. Vickers also has her trepidations regarding Bentley’s fresh-out-of-rehab brother Chase, who will be her cameraman, but she will find him to be much reasonably cautious than his gung-ho sister, especially when things get weird, which they will.

Of course, Bentley immediately opens the storeroom the management agent told them should always remained locked, where they find two spectacularly creepy life-size clown mannequins—or were there three of them? Then they visit the local antique shop, where they discover some sinister memorabilia and documents that on closer inspection link the Carmichael Manor to the Abaddon Hotel, the site of the infamous mass murder and subsequent mysterious deaths, before it finally burned to the ground in the previous Hell House LLC.

The connection between the Carmichaels and Abaddon is new to this film. However, what really freaks out some of the talking heads offering commentary in the “documentary” framing the “found footage” is the previously unknown connection between objects at the Carmichael Manor and the late Margot Bentley.

V/H/S/85, on Shudder

People did not overshare in the 1980s, except for characters in indie films, who liked to keep video diaries. You could argue the V/H/S found footage anthology franchise follows in that tradition. Recording your crimes is a very post-2000 smart-phone thing to do, but in the 1980s this kind of footage was the stuff of urban legend. Fans get another batch of supposedly underground video footage in V/H/S/85, which premieres Friday on Shudder.

So far, the V/H/S films produced for Shudder have not been as good as the initial trilogy, with the previous installment, V/H/S/99 representing an all-time series low. Happily, 85 recovers some lost ground, particularly with the first full segment, “No Wake,” written and directed by Mike P. Nelson. Ironically, this segment initially seems to repeat the sins of 99, serving up a lot of off-putting sadism, as a sniper on shore picks off a group of water-skiers. However, there is a massive twist that changes everything.

In fact, the twist will continue twisting when Nelson continues the two-part story later in the film in “Ambrosia,” which gives us a radically different perspective on the events. It is also very clever and cathartically satisfying.

Gigi Saul Guerrero’s “God of Death” pointedly depicts the petty rivalries and eccentricities of a low-budget CDMX news broadcast during the real-life earthquake of 1985. It leads to a colorful and dramatic revelation, but a lot of brutality before that seems unnecessarily nihilistic. This is a better film than 99, but it is still incredibly dark.

Natasha Kermani’s “TKNOGD” is a mildly amusing satire of Eighties hipsterism. Fittingly it takes place in the Public Theater, but it is a rather thin piece that proceeds in a straight, predictable line.

Scott Derrickson (who helmed The Black Phone) provides another highpoint for both 85 and the Shudder trilogy (at least thus far). Again, it starts out so brutally, more sensitive viewers might give up on it, but the premise is a killer. It turns out, the police have been getting video tapes of a series of grisly murderers almost a week before they happen. If Black Phone was Derrickson's tribute to the phone company, then this is his homage to the Post Office. The twist is dark, of course, but it is lethally effective.

Lola: The Future Front

They are partially inspired by the Mitford Sisters (especially Diana, the one who married Oswald Mosley), but initially their ideologies are not so extreme—just their personalities. When Thomasina Hanbury invents a device to view the future in 1941, the sisters duly try to use it to serve the British war effort. Unfortunately, hubris brings the downfall of the arrogant, even when they can see the future in Andrew Legge’s Lola, which releases in theaters and on VOD this Friday.

“Thom” is the socially awkward genius, who invented the “Lola” device. Martha is her hard-partying sister, who becomes a fan of Dylan, Bowie, and the 1960’s counter-culture through the Lola. She is not a scientist, but she does the leg work for their “Angel of Portobello” radio broadcasts, giving advance warning of the next day’s air raids. Martha also “handles” Lt. Sebastian, the ambitious intelligence officer, who traces their signal. Unfortunately, Thom starts to resent both Sebastian’s unwelcome oversight and her sister’s romantic interest in him.

Lola is not exactly a time-travel film, but it is a very clever, low-fi sf film that twists the time continuum into knots. It is also one of the more inventive “found footage” movies in years. Initially, found footage seems like a strange choice to tell the tale, but it makes sense at the end.

Legge incorporates archival newsreel footage for a Zelig-like effect, but that is really the least of it. The most intriguing aspects of the screenplay, co-written by Legge and Angeli Macfarlane, are the ways in which the Hanbury Sisters use their device to re-shape the war. At first, they very successfully mitigate the impact of the London Blitz. However, as they get more ambitious, they start causing unintended consequences.

The Found Footage Phenomenon, on Shudder

History students should appreciate found footage horror, because it is told entirely through supposed primary sources—as primary (and often primal) as it gets. It feels real, because it looks like it was recorded as it happened. Of course, the better ones require extensive planning and preparation, while the worst give the subgenre a bad name. Some of the leading filmmakers associated with the grungy style reflect on its meaning and development in Sarah Appleton & Phillip Escott’s The Found Footage Phenomenon, which premieres Thursday on Shudder.

To their credit, nobody interviewed in Phenomenon suggests found footage horror started with Blair Witch. Instead, they point to the epistolary style of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula and Orson Welles in/famous War of the Worlds radio broadcast. It is so Wellesian that he innovated a super-cheap and convincing method of story-telling, but left it to others to exploit it commercially. Some also point to Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom, but the Blair Witch Project and Ruggero Deodato’s notorious Cannibal Holocaust were really the first films that had marketing campaigns designed to convince people what transpires on-screen happened for real.

Of course, everyone more or less concedes all the found footage films that followed Blair Witch represent a wildly mixed bag. To often, they feature disturbing levels of violence. Filmmakers can justify it any way they like, but it doesn’t make the ultra-realistic-appearing brutality any easier to watch. That is why clever and inventive found footage, like the Paz Brothers’ JeruZalem and What We Do in the Shadows (both of which get their due) are so fun and different.

Appleton & Escott talk to just about everyone they should, including Deodato, Eduardo Sanchez (co-director of Blair Witch), Doron and Yoav Paz, Patrick Brice (director of Creep), Rob Savage (Host), Steven DeGennaro (Found Footage 3D), and Oren Peli (of the Paranormal Activity franchise, probably still the reigning champion of the found footage box-office).

Murder Death Koreatown

It is a hoax or maybe a hoax of a hoax. There’s too much that doesn’t add up, but it is one of the most convincing found footage films—probably ever. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make the protagonist any less annoying to spend time with. Still, someone out there is responsible for some eerily clever execution, but nobody has yet to claim responsibility for Murder Death Koreatown, which is now streaming on Amazon Prime.

According to publicity materials, MDK came about because a guy knew a guy who knew a guy. Supposedly, a film editor known simply as K Anon came into possession of footage sent to him by an old college buddy that he acquired from the filmmaker, a former friend of his who is now mysteriously missing. Initially, the editor was disturbed by the material, but he eventually stitched it together into this film. For the unknown filmmaker, it all starts with a tragic domestic murder in his Koreatown neighborhood. That Macguffin appears to be a true but not especially remarkable crime.

However, as our faceless protag pours over details of the crime, he starts to notice discrepancies, or at least he thinks he does. As his interest grows, he decides to shoot a guerilla documentary on the case. Soon, he is being pressured to drop his investigation by various neighborhood residents, because they either want to cover-up the truth or possibly they just find him obnoxious. His long-suffering girlfriend is not thrilled with the project either. Undaunted, he starts to suspect the involvement of a weird street preacher and other creepy Koreatown denizens. Rather ominously, he starts to believe secret messages have been left to him in the form of eccentric Korean graffiti scrawled throughout the neighborhood.

Nashville ’18: Found Footage 3D

How do you make found footage even more annoying? Adding 3D ought to do the trick (and vice versa). Granted, it would be hard to explain why anyone would shoot the footage to found in 3D, but that will not stop an aspiring sleazy filmmaker from staking his claim to the first 3D found footage movie. However, things get meta when the evil entity thingy at their remote cabin location starts responding to the 3D cameras in Steven DeGennaro’s Found Footage 3D (trailer here), which screens (in 3D) as part of the 2018 Nashville Film Festival.

Derek is the producer of Spectre of Death, which he “co-wrote” and will co-star in with his ex-wife Amy. Yep, already super awkward, even before you take into account his socially inept brother Mark (who serves as editor, camera man and director of the crowd-funder behind-the-scenes footage) has long carried a torch for Amy. Derek has hired Andrew, a reasonably legit director, but he constantly makes it clear he is the one calling the shots. Their sound guy Carl is also a pro, who happens to owe Derek money. Their PA Lily has never worked on a film before, but her job is obviously making Amy jealous, but she is really not that kind of person.

Of course, the cabin where they will be shooting and bunking looks all kinds of sketchy. There even seems be dried blood stains on the floor. Yet, the hardy crew persists. Admittedly, they should have left the first night, but all their bickering and in-fighting convincingly distracts them from the ominous dark something lurking in slightly out-of-focus in the corners of Mark’s frames—until it is too late.

FF3D is not quite as meta as it initially sounds, but that is not exactly a tragedy. The underlying concept still manages to breathe some life into found footage sub-genre. It also boasts more character development than nearly all of its found footage predecessors combined. There are some strong personalities in this film, starting with the spectacularly obnoxious Derek, but also including the sarcastic Carl, recovering-co-dependent Amy, and the increasingly exasperated Andrew.

As Derek, Carter Roy truly chews the scenery like madman. He really goes all out, but by doing so, he really sets up all the uncanny business that eventually goes down. Likewise, Alena von Stroheim (yes, the great granddaughter of the Greed director) makes Amy a remarkable bundle of hot mess neuroses. Scott Allen Perry counter-balances them quite drolly, as the acerbic but more down-to-earth Carl. Tom Saporito also serves as a partial audience surrogate as he becomes at first impatient and then thoroughly disgusted with Derek and Amy’s melodrama, as well as Carl’s attitude. Yet, perhaps the funniest turn comes from genre critic Scott Weinberg, playing himself, making an ill-advised set-visit to Spectre of Death (you just have to see it for yourself).

This is probably the most original true Blair Witch-style found footage film since the Dark Tapes anthology and the funniest since maybe the underrated V/H/S Viral. However, the considerable time admirably devoted establishing characters and setting the scene could have been pruned a little, because the legit horror movie business does not really get going until after the halfway point. Regardless, it is cool to see a genre filmmaker give a tired convention a fresh new spin and largely pull it off. Recommended with a fair degree of enthusiasm for horror fans, Found Footage 3D screens this Friday (5/18) and Saturday (5/19), during the Nashville Film Festival (and it also streams exclusively on Shudder).

Living Among Us: Interviews with Vampires

Vampires are finally getting more media savvy. They will invite a TV news crew into the home of a respected member of their underground community, so they can explain vampirism is really just a medical condition. Or maybe they will simply kill them, because nobody will miss a few media jerks. Either way, Benny the intern will be filming way more than he bargained for in Brian A. Metcalf’s found footage horror-comedy Living Among Us (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.

Mike, a local market prima donna broke the story revealing the network of blood banks supplying plasma to vampires, so the bloodsuckers’ sect leader naturally reached out to him for a proposed up-close-and-personal piece on life as a modern-day vampire. The blood banks’ secret distribution scheme was actually a good thing because it means they no longer need to kill to feed. The traditional vampire lore are just myths and misconceptions Andrew and his wife Elleanor insist. However, they insist on some suspicious ground rules before they allow Mike, his segment producer Carrie, and Benny, the station manager’s idiot brother-in-law to stay in their home. Of course, we’re talking about staples, like crucifixes, holy water, and wooden stakes.

As you would expect, the vampires immediately act suspicious, especially Blake, a swaggering Lestat wannabe and Selvin, a deeply warped former dungeon “dweller.” Fortunately, the nebbish Benny has a compulsive need to document everything, so he will capture some freaky business—thereby supplying viewers with our movie.

Metcalf maintains a healthy energy level and his screenplay is reasonably amusing. Still, it is hard for LAU or any subsequent vampire comedy not to suffer in comparison with Taika Waititi & Jermaine Clement’s What We Do in the Shadows, especially when LAU uses a documentary-news crew conceit. On the other hand, Metcalf recruited the character actor power trio of William Sadler, John Heard, and James Russo, as the vampire sect leader, Andrew the vampire host, and the gruff station manager, respectively. All three give any film instant credibility.

Indeed, you have to give Metcalf credit—he skewers the media quite effectively, while cranking up a sense that things are about to go very, very bad. Andrew Keegan and Chad Todhunter chew the scenery nicely as wildcards Blake and Selvin. Plus, Esmé Bianco, arguably the biggest genre star from Game of Thrones and The Magicians is suitably regal and fierce as Elleanor.

There are plenty of prior found footage mock-doc horror movies, but LAU is cleverer than most. At times, its limited budget results in some cheesy looking TV newscast sequences, but that’s forgivable. Recommended for horror-comedy fans, Living Among Us opens tomorrow (2/2) in New York, at the Cinema Village.

PDXFF ’17: Wol-ha—Very Bad Moon Rising

It would sort of be like collecting some of the orange carpeting from The Shining or the puzzle box from Hellraiser, except the grave of the kisaeng done wrong in the 1967 Korean horror movie A Public Cemetery of Wol-ha is very much real. At least one mysterious collector believes so. He has tasked a private investigator and his part-time assistant with retrieving the vengeful kisaeng’s grave stone. In the history of bad horror movie ideas, this sounds like one of the worst, but the team still does its best to fulfill its obligations in Oh In-chun’s Wol-ha: Very Bad Moon Rising (trailer here), which screens during the 2017 Portland Film Festival.

Thanks to the rise of found footage horror, videographers now have the world’s most dangerous job. Just ask Aaron from the first Creep. Now it is Yang Jun-il’s turn. He has been hired by Kang Chun-sik to document his mission. They must obtain the headstone of the very late Lee Wol-hyang, as seen in A Public Cemetery, by the end of the day, or contractual penalties will incur. However, her true resting place is someplace in the remote mountains, where cell service is sure to be iffy.

In addition to Yang, Kang has brought his junior gofer Park Han-su and they are stuck with the standoffish Masami, the weirdo client’s resentful assistant. Apparently, the client also arranged a guide, Lee Jun-seop, who happens to share a surname and the hometown of the grudge-wielding kisaeng.

There is something very wrong about this Lee, starting with his aggressively annoying sense of humor. Kang and Masami-san can at least find common ground in their distaste for him. Even though he seems to know exactly where they are, he gets them all thoroughly lost. With the daylight burning, bad things are heading our troupe’s way. Of course, we’re talking about stalkery bedlam and madness of some sort.

Very Bad Moon will definitely inspire viewers to catch up with the 1967 film, which is definitely a good sign. It also manages to breathe life into the found footage genre. Oh turns loose several extreme characters are reaps the resulting chaos. You will want to slap the nauseatingly arrogant Kang, roll your eyes at the petulant Masami, and throttle the obnoxious Lee.

That might not sound like fun, but strong reactions are usually the result of an effective film. Such is the case with Moon, which gets decidedly creepy when the sun goes down. Oh makes quite a nice pivot, taking all the nervous energy from the awkward comedy of the first two acts and funneling it into some really unsettling Blair Witch-style business.

Usually, you do not get much character development in found footage, but Moon has all kinds of messy character. To its credit, the small ensemble chews the scenery like mad. It is definitely one of the better let’s-document-this horror movies of recent vintage, up there with 1974 and JeruZalem, making it dramatically superior to the Blair Witch reboot/sequel. Highly recommended for genre fans, Wol-ha: Very Bad Moon Rising screens tonight (11/1), as part of this year’s Portland Film Festival.

Creep 2: The Return of America’s Talkiest Serial Killer

The serial killer now calling himself Aaron (in honor of a recent victim) has always been somewhat prone to New Agey Deepak Chopra psycho-babble. All that self-actualization talk makes his murders even scarier. Yet, it also leaves him weirdly prone to crises of confidence and inspiration, but he always remains extraordinarily dangerous and unpredictable. America’s talkiest serial killer commences a new game of cat-and-mouse in Patrick Brice’s Creep 2 (trailer here), a Blumhouse production, which releases today on VOD.

Unlike old, dead videographer Aaron, Sara came to the “Creep’s” house thinking she would be the one using him. Her thing was Encounters, a floundering web series, in which she would film meetings with various sad, strange men who had placed personal ads online. Aaron sounded like a loon, which would be good for business, but she has no idea how right she is.

Sara assumes Aaron is full of it when he starts boasting of his many murders, but we know better. Nevertheless, she finds he preoccupation rather unsettling. He even shows her the last scene of the previous movie, but she still doesn’t believe he is the real deal. Of course, she will eventually learn better. She is in over her head, but Sara is tougher mentally than his typical victims. Plus, he might not be at the top of his game either—but there is always a good chance Aaron (formerly Josef) is playing her.

You have to give Brice and co-screenwriter Mark Duplass credit, because they basically keep the exact same formula (two strangers video-taping each other in a remote luxury home), but change-up the particulars substantially enough so that Creep 2 does not feel like a rerun of Creep 1. Obviously, the different gender dynamics play a significant role.

During the cringe-inducing Appropriate Behavior, Desiree Akhavan made us all feel like animals compelled to chew off a leg because we were caught in that bear-trap of a film. Happily, Creep 2 proves she can do more than American Pie sex jokes for Brooklyn hipsters. She convincingly portrays Sara as a smart, calculating, and deeply neurotic character, making her one of the most distinctive potential “final girls” of this year’s horror movie season.

Just as he did in the first film, Duplass gleefully chews the scenery, playing “Aaron’s” sinister gamesmanship to the hilt. Frankly, it is a shame Robin Williams never had the chance to dig into a darkly manic character like this. Whether it is real or feigned, Aaron’s bouts of depression give the second go-round an even darker texture. (It ought to prove how mainstream and pervasive depression is within society, when it even affects the psycho killer stalking you.) As an added bonus, indie filmmaker Caveh Zahedi (happily not yet assassinated after the boldly revealing The Sheik and I) appears briefly as a previous guest on Encounters.

As was also the case with the first film, Creep 2 is remarkably smoothly cut together by editor Christopher Conlon, especially assuming there was a good deal of improvising going on again. Yet, there are several departures from the first film specifically and horror movie conventions in general that leave us intrigued by what might lay in store for viewers in third prospective film of the projected trilogy. Recommended for fans of found footage and the original Creep, Creep 2 is now available on VOD platforms.

Brooklyn Horror ’17: 1974

In the 1970s, consumer 8mm was largely for A-V geeks. Most of them were not aspiring indie filmmakers. Instead, they used the format to document milestones, like weddings, graduations, and demonic possessions. Manuel (a man-child toy-maker) wants to capture his early days in a new house with his newlywed wife Altair, but he records some disturbing events when she falls under the influence of a mysterious force. She claims to be communing with angels, but that seems highly unlikely throughout Victor Dryere’s Mexican found footage 1974 (trailer here), which screens tonight during the 2017 Brooklyn Horror Film Festival.

Dryere really did shoot 1974 in 8mm and his cast sure look like they’re wearing polyester. The early 1970’s details are spot on, except for the appearance of a Rubik’s Cube (accurately called a “Wonder Cube,” as it was known at the time, but it did not break out with consumers until the awesome 80s). Whatever, at least it helps reassure us what we’re watching really isn’t real.

Sure, there are a few weird little things happening here and there, but Manuel doesn’t worry about them until a load of bricks and black paint mysteriously arrives at their doorstep. To his surprise, Altair starts using them to build a black door in their bedroom, because “the angels told her to.” As she becomes increasingly spacey, even her standoffish sister Tere grows concerned. Manuel’s stoner pal Callahan even moves into to somehow help, but a fat lot of good he’ll do.

Of course, we know it ends badly from the in media res prologue, featuring the baffled TV news report of the aftermath. Frankly, this is one of the few found footage films in recent years that looks totally credible. So many Blair Witch copy-cats cheat and cut corners, but this really looks like freaky events in 1974 that were caught on a crummy consumer 8mm camera. If just about any viewer saw a film like this in 1998 (pre-Blair) they would be easily convinced it was legit—and deeply disturbed by it.

Granted, the ending is completely insane, but Dryere still comes close to earning it. Although it features some relatively established cast-members (such as Diana Bovio playing Altair), 1974 is not a star-making kind of film. Instead, they mostly do their duty to blend into the yucky 1970s milieu, while Dryere films them from odd angles and in unflattering light. The results are indeed pretty scary. Recommended for horror fans attracted by the ‘70s setting, 1974 screens tonight (10/15) at the Wythe Hotel, as part of this year’s Brooklyn Horror Film Festival.

The Houses October Built 2: Blue Skeleton Strikes Back

This is one area where it is definitely more socially favorable to receive rather than give. Most folks can accept the healthy catharsis of enjoying a good scare, but if you dig scaring people, you are probably some kind of mean bastard. It makes you wonder about the people who work at “extreme haunts.” Most of them probably just want to entertain their patrons, but the shadowy group known as Blue Skeleton is something else entirely. At the end of the first film, Blue Skeleton had entombed Brandy in a coffin and were just about to cover it with dirt when the cops arrived. Now known on the internet as “Coffin Girl,” she will reluctantly join her cash-poor friends and fellow Blue Skeleton survivors on another tour of the heartland’s most distinctive haunted houses in Bobby Roe’s The Houses October Built 2 (trailer here), which opens today in New York.

The October franchise is an interesting attempt to combine the found footage horror movie with reality travel programming. As in the first installment, Brandy and her jerky pals will tour some real-life haunts and in some cases, talk to the actual proprietors. Not surprisingly, it is hard to get the mix right, but some of the attractions, like the zombie run and a cerebral zombie apocalypse role playing scenario look like a great deal of fun.

Unfortunately, it is never all that scary to watch them tour the real world, fake haunts. However, we periodically see ominous signs Blue Skeleton is out there, watching them. It should therefore surprise nobody when it turns out they are the people behind “Hellbent,” the extreme haunt all the professionals are talking about in hushed tones.

For the most part, Roe and co-writer-co-star Zack Andrews follow the same playbook they used for the first film, but that option will not be available to them if they come back for another sequel, because of a game-changing climax. It is also striking how little actual on-screen gore can be seen in these films. Yet, the sequel has some admittedly creepy moments.

To increase the meta-ness, all five Scooby Mystery team members play their namesakes. They deserve credit, because they really nail that bickering, bantering camaraderie, which is so tough to fake. We definitely believe they have been through a lot together. Brandy Schaefer is particularly compelling as “Coffin Girl.” She is absolutely not a victim, but she also has an understandably limited tolerance for extreme shenanigans.

October 2 isn’t the scariest film you will ever see, but it might give viewers some ideas for road trips. As an added bonus, we also get to watch champion competitive eater Takeru Kobayashi scarfing zombie brains. It is hard to formulaic a precise reaction to the sequel, but we are definitely curious to see where it might go from here. Recommended as an eventual stream on Netflix or Shudder, The Houses October Built 2 opens today (9/22) in New York, at the Village East.