REVIEW: A NECESSARY DEATH

"It's not that I want to die. It's just that I don't want to live anymore."

The "story" of filmmaker Daniel Stamm is one that is starting to become irritating and all-too-common within the unhallowed hills of Hollywood. A Necessary Death, his found footage film debut, made the festival rounds and captured all kinds of attention, including that of hack Eli Roth. In conjunction with Strike Entertainment, Roth hooked Stamm up with the gig of directing The Last Exorcism, another found footage film, this time with far less brains and more cheap theatrics. And like so many other directors, whose knack for low budget and unique ideas was wasted on brainless studio fare, Stamm, too, was instead assigned to a generic project that was entirely beneath him. After first watching The Last Exorcism, I was merely disappointed by what as only an overly hyped film. But now, after watching A Necessary Death, I look at Exorcism not just as a bad film, but as a huge waste of time, money, and resources, all of which could have been used on a different project for which Stamm had more interest and passion.

A Necessary Death is not only remarkable, but the most realistic found footage movie I've ever seen. Though it would not be traditionally considered a horror movie, the fact that this narrative could very well have been a real documentary is what truly provides the audience with all the horror it could ever need. In this day and age, in which the curious could literally log onto Youtube and watch real people dying real deaths; and in this time where everything needs to be recorded on video and released to the masses, whether that be journalists being beheaded by terrorists, or a man's face being eaten off on a Florida street, A Necessary Death could literally have been released and marketed as a 100% real documentary and I doubt it would have caused any sort of uproar. It's this kind of demonizing, yet desensitization, to death and dying that has driven our filmmaker/lead character, a college student named Gilbert, to carry out his vision: to capture, from first realization to final act, a person's suicide. It is the very kind of ego-inflated, self-important, pretentious idea that any college student might have, which makes it all the more believable.

After a series of open interviews, in which candidates vie to be the focus of Gilbert's film, he and his crew settle on a kid named Mathew, who is dying from an untreatable brain condition and has opted to end his life before encountering the condition's very painful final stages. After Gilbert explains the "point" of the documentary to Mathew - to strip away the taboo and baggage associated with suicide and show that the person who wants to end their life is completely cognizant of their decision - Mathew agrees to be the focal point.

Like all things in life, God laughs as we make plans, and what started off as a peculiar but straightforward project eventually becomes anything but. It all unfolds strikingly realistically, and except for one or two sequences that reek too much of narrative, it never comes across as blatantly cinematic. Meaning, if a person had told me to watch the movie and told me it was real, I would have believed that person...that is until the ending.

A Necessary Death is an amazing debut from a young filmmaker. It is a highly emotional journey, as the characters onscreen are just as affected by the events as the movie's audience. We understand, condone, root for, and then eventually despise Gilbert. His transformation is as obvious and dark as the unfolding events of the film. A slightly arrogant but ultimately likeable young student (who goes as far as alerting social services after two young girls come to his suicide candidate interview, which shows that he does have a conscience), eventually devolves into the very thing you may have sensed was inevitable, but definitely hoped was not unavoidable. It very much captures very real people experiencing very real conflicts and emotions in conjunction with the project. And the scenes consisting of Mathew and the film crew visiting Mathew's mother, and lying to her as to why Mathew is the focus of their documentary, is especially heartbreaking. We as the audience cannot help but put ourselves in Mathew's shoes. We can't help but wonder how it would seem if that were our mother, or father, or grandmother or grandfather - someone who cared for us and loved us and would die a thousand times before we ever experienced pain - and wonder if we would ever be able to wear that fake smile and tell that lie without breaking down in front of them.

The actors are all incredibly wonderful and real, especially Mathew. He isn't the slobbering mess our preconceived notions of a suicidal person may fool us into expecting. He is a kid who happens to be dying, and who very calmly has made a decision based on his own needs and desires. He's not just some sad sack who is heartbroken over a bad break-up, or who feels the world is a cruel place. Ironically, he is a kid who would actually prefer to live - who shows signs of being happy with who he is and the life he so far has lived - but who understands that his proverbial ticket has already been punched. 

Gilber, too, is real, and likeable, though marginally less so than Mathew. Because he is the person endeavoring to capture a death on camera, by default you approach him with great caution. Though the movie takes great pains to paint him as an equally sympathetic person, who looks at his project as a way of waking up the masses and forcing them to see that suicide shouldn't be this shameful thing we hide away in our subconscious, the movie relents that because it is providing us with this character, we will never be 100% behind him. But we do want him to succeed. It's a very dangerous gamble to make, as how the audience approaches and responds to the film rests entirely on Gilbert's ability to be a sympathetic character. Luckily, he does.

The rest of the supporting cast, one of whom ultimately derails the the project once they become a bit too close to the film's subject, all do a great job at playing their roles exactly as they should be playing them. They aren't entirely comfortable with the film's topic, though they agree what is being captured is important. At several times throughout the film they all sort of tag up at first to remind Gilbert and the audience that though they're driven to continue, they are hesitant as well. (Stamm also appears as the documentary's cameraman.)

My only qualm is with the ending, and I can honestly say in the case of A Necessary Death that the "alternate ending" included on this screener copy of the DVD is more realistic and more affecting than the one the filmmakers opted to go with. While being as completely spoiler free as I can, I will say this: when the garage door comes down at the climax of the film, your heart will be in your stomach, as mine was. But some of this shock occurs due to its inevitability, which is somewhat telegraphed at the beginning of the sequence. While the "alternate" ending may be less shocking, it is far more realistic, and far more haunting.

A Necessary Death, though made in 2008, has only very recently come to DVD, and can also be purchased through iTunes.

REVIEW: EVIDENCE

Evidence is a wild ride. Completely unpredictable, and perhaps purposely misleading, it takes you in a direction you don't expect. While it does fall victim to some of the more usual found footage pitfalls, it's extremely rewarding to the viewer who sticks with it until the end.

The set up to Evidence is sinfully basic, so much to the point that it might even be offensive. Oh, what's that? Two guys and their girlfriends are going camping in the woods and one of them is going to film it because he wants to inexplicably document his friend's first camping trip? Mm, sounds like...the dullest documentary ever.

Our young cast ranges from sweet to abrasive, but never seem disingenuous. Is it easy to accept that the guy who runs the camera for the first act of the film is kind of a dick? Yes. Whether because that's a realistic attribute, or because the found footage sub-genre has successfully created that trope, it doesn't matter. He's a dick, and he only becomes more of a dick as the kids' camping trip ensues.

One, two, skip a few...once the thing stalking them in the woods makes an appearance, and once the kids begin running through the woods at night, you will roll your eyes. Because we've all been here before, haven't we? First with Blair Witch, and then with its many imitators, we've crossed this bridge. Sure, the fleeting glimpses the audience gets of the creature are cool. From what we can see it's an interesting design, but it's really not enough to sustain an entire film. What very misleadingly seems to be a tale of creature versus kids soon descends into a whole other kind of madness entirely.

There are certain things a movie can do that make me love it. Some of these I've mentioned before, such as surprising me when it sheds its surface-level meagerness and becomes something more. But I also love when a movie makes me feel like an asshole for dismissing it. I've seen many films for which I had high hopes, but only to give up once I was able to determine they were not going to provide me with what I had come for. And I gave up during Evidence. "This is what's happening?" I'd said. "How fucking boring."

Well...I'm an asshole. And that pleases me. I wish I could gush about how visceral and thrilling and FUN the last 15-20 minutes are, but that would completely ruin it for you. And for once the trailer (embedded below) barely scratches the surface of the more intense scenes of the film.

However (there's always a however), the film is not without its problems.

There are two kinds of found footage movies: one where people set out to capture on video exactly what it is that ends up killing them, and one where people bring a camera to their otherwise mundane excursion and happen to capture...well...the thing that kills them. Because this movie wallows in the latter, the only thing to initially maintain our interest is the kids themselves. We have no investigation into an urban legend, no inkling of any kind of what's running rampant in the woods. Because of that, we have no "hook." And since the kids are, at first, our only focal point, there are too many instances of them (the guys especially) veering off into unlikeable territory. This isn't necessarily a fault of the film - people are dicks in real life; I've met them, so have you - but once it gets to the point where you are begging the creature to burst from the woods and take off some heads, you wonder if that's exactly what the filmmakers wanted, or if they failed to restrain their actors accordingly.

Basically, if Heather from Blair Witch got on your nerves, make way for Ryan: King Dick.

Most of the film feels genuinely acted, but every once in a while a line of dialogue or snippet of a performance will feel very forced and scripted, and it can be momentarily distracting. One of the most offensive things I think a movie can do is have a character provide exposition by talking to him/herself. There's something cheap and lazy about it that doesn't sit well with me. While Evidence doesn't depend on this as a crutch, it does utilize it so a character can express how he/she is feeling, and what's supposed to be a real, captured-in-the-moment experience feels less so.

Like many other found footage movies, Evidence is at its most effecting and thrilling in the last act of the film, and while it's blocked and choreographed very well, our filmmakers may have gone a little overboard in post production. There are way, WAY too many instances of the camera momentarily freezing, blacking out, or going on the fritz as our characters flee from their stalkers. What was supposed to provoke a feeling of realism only serves to be an annoyance.

Evidence (written by Ryan McCoy, who also plays Ryan, and directed by Howie Askins) was completed in 2010 and made the film festival rounds in 2011. Some of the more popular horror sites deservedly lauded the film, which is how it caught my attention. Currently there are no plans for a North American release, but I hope it will be out sometime this year.

Fans of both the found footage sub-genre and the more visceral aspects of the recent Cabin in the Woods should give it a watch. Unlike Blair Witch and Paranormal Activity, Evidence does not believe in the less-is-more technique. As John Carpenter once said, if you have a cool looking monster, show the fucking thing. Evidence will show you things that will linger in your mind long after the credits roll.

UNSUNG HORRORS: GHOSTWATCH

Every once in a while, a genuinely great horror movie—one that would rightfully be considered a classic, had it gotten more exposure and love at the box office—makes an appearance. It comes, no one notices, and it goes. But movies like this are important. They need to be treasured and remembered. If intelligent, original horror is supported, then that's what we'll begin to receive, in droves. We need to make these movies a part of the legendary genre we hold so dear. Because these are the unsung horrors. These are the movies that should have been successful, but were instead ignored. They should be rightfully praised for the freshness and intelligence and craft that they have contributed to our genre. 

So, better late than never, we’re going to celebrate them now… one at a time. 

Dir. Lesley Manning

1992

BBC

United Kingdom

"This is Orson Welles, ladies and gentlemen, out of character, to assure you that War of the Worlds has no further significance than as the holiday offering it was intended to be; The Mercury Theatre's own radio version of dressing up in a sheet and jumping out of a bush and saying "Boo!" Starting now, we couldn't soap all your windows and steal all your garden gates by tomorrow night, so we did the next best thing: we annihilated the world before your very ears and utterly destroyed the CBS. You will be relieved, I hope, to learn that we didn't mean it, and that both institutions are still open for business. So goodbye everybody, and remember please for the next day or so the terrible lesson you learned tonight. That grinning, glowing, globular invader of your living room is an inhabitant of the pumpkin patch, and if your doorbell rings and nobody's there, that was no Martian; it's Halloween."

- Orson Welles' on-air apology following

 his War of the Worlds broadcast; 

October 30, 1938

Running BBC's 1992 Ghostwatch program for this entry of Unsung Horrors is kind of a cheat for several reasons. First, while I try to feature films reasonably recent, Ghostwatch will turn twenty years old this coming Halloween. Second, its notoriously hard to find. If you've got a region-free DVD  player and deep pockets, then you should be able to order the DVD from Amazon UK fairly easily. Finally, Ghostwatch isn't very unsung. Considering its extremely limited audience and near impossibility to find, it has a wealth of fans. People who have seen it love it and eagerly share stories of how it left them utterly terrified. It's because of this that I couldn't resist running an appreciation of this incredibly eerie and effective film. 

Shot and edited weeks in advance to its air date, Ghostwatch is presented as a live on-air special that spotlights an alleged haunted house on Foxhill Drive in London. The host of this show is Michael Parkinson, a well known (and quite real) British journalist. Next to him sits Dr. Lin Pascoe, a parapsychologist who fervently believes that the spooky events occurring at Foxhill Drive are genuine signs of a haunting. And in the cursed house live the Early family; mother Pam and daughters Suzanne and Kim. Much like modern ghost-hunting shows of today, a camera crew enters the house to investigate the events the Early family claim to have been dealing with for months. Leading this crew is Sarah Greene, another well-known British personality. Sure enough, the house is haunted for real, and as the investigation unfolds, the events within the house steadily increase into utter chaos.

While the crux of Ghostwatch is built around the events occurring inside the house at Foxhill Drive, the power of the story comes from all the different sources of information used throughout the film. Michael Parkinson and Dr. Pascoe provide much of the exposition and background on the investigation, and because they are on a "live" on-air show, they frequently patch in phone calls from "audience members" who share either their own ghostly encounters, or provide even more information about the Foxhill Drive house previously unknown. What this does is add to the legend of the specter haunting the house, and with each new detail, the events become more and more creepy. Think Blair Witch: The first half of that film is the kids gathering information, and the only spooky goings-on are married to stories told by locals and experts. Ghostwatch operates the same way.

The awful thing causing all this havoc is Pipes the ghost, the name derived by the Early children after the first few times their mother had claimed the weird noises they were hearing were caused by their water pipes banging beneath their walls. Over the course of the last few months, Pipes made his presence quite well known, focusing most of his wrath on young Suzanne. The few scarce sightings we have of Pipes, along with eyewitness accounts of the young children, paint a very chilling image of him in our mind, but it's at the very end when Pipes' true origins are revealed is when the film is at its most frightening. The filmmakers do a great job of teasing you with brief sightings of Pipes, but never long enough to give you a full, detailed glimpse of how he actually appears. Brief images of him are scattered throughout, and while the film today can be paused, or slowed down frame-by-frame, twenty years ago the audience had no such options; they watched it unfolding "live" on their televisions, and the brief sightings of him were made to induce moments of "did I just see that?"

Pipes is described as having a skull-like and bald head, a scratched face, and one bloodied eye. He wears a black dress with large buttons running down the middle (the explanation for which is eventually provided), and sightings of him seem to be accompanied by the shrill howls of cats. The image enough is unnerving on its own, but once we find out the ghost's real name, his origins, and how he possibly might have come to be, it becomes much more so.

Your pranksters.

Ghostwatch plays out in real time, darting back and forth between the live feed in the house and the studio. Every actor handles their part with ease, from those playing different people to those playing versions of themselves; all the performances come across as very genuine. Despite the more lurid attacks young Suzanne endures, or the terror Sarah Greene finds herself facing, it's Michael Parkinson that has the most interesting role; his performance is incredibly realistic, in that it suggests he doesn't take much of what Dr. Pascoe and the Early family are telling him all that seriously, but is willing to go along with it for the sake of journalistic objectivity. Being a real journalist, he knows he cannot let his own prejudices cloud his attempts to tell a story.

Ghostwatch remained unavailable on home video for ten years after its airing for quite an interesting and unfortunate reason: Despite the film running during the same time slot that a popular (and scripted) BBC series called "Screen One" usually ran, despite the program being preceded by a "written by" credit, and despite the call-in number provided during the program stating that the program callers were watching was a work of fiction, certain members of Ghostwatch's viewing audience thought it was real, and it really fucked with their minds; from the revealed origins of Pipes to the in-studio phone calls made by "audience members" experiencing weird occurrences in their own home seemly caused by the events in the program - they bought it all: hook, line, and sinker. 

And while any writer who crafted such a project might say, "Then I've done my job!" he probably didn't count on, hope for, or expect the effect it would have on some lesser-stabled viewers:

18-year-old factory worker Martin Denham, who suffered from learning difficulties and had a mental age of 13, committed suicide five days after the programme aired. The family home had suffered with a faulty central heating system which had caused the pipes to knock; Denham linked this to the activity in the show causing great worry. He left a suicide note reading "if there are ghosts I will be ... with you always as a ghost." His mother and stepfather, April and Percy Denham, blamed the BBC. They claimed that Martin was "hypnotised and obsessed" by the programme. The Broadcasting Standards Commission refused their complaint, along with 34 others, as being outside their remit, but the High Court granted the Denhams permission for a judicial review requiring the BSC to hear their complaint. (Wiki.)

And so, following such controversy, any future broadcasts of the program were pulled, and for ten years it remained unavailable on home video. A ten-year anniversary VHS and DVD were issued but are now out of print.

Part of me wishes I had been a London native while watching Ghostwatch for the first time. I'm sure the power of the film's realism is enforced when seeing the likes of Michael Parkinson, Sarah Greene, Mike Smith, and Craig Charles all dealing with the paranormal activity in very different ways - because they are all real people; very well-known television and media personalities playing victimized and scared versions of themselves. An American equivalent of the cast might have Regis Philbin (but perhaps someone with a bit more esteem) as the host, with any assortment of other well-known personalities filling out the cast of the studio crew. Perhaps Kelly Rippa as Sarah Greene, since I just opened that door. Then again, the familiarity of them might destroy the illusion that what we're seeing is real. Maybe it's best that I had no idea who any of these TV personalities were until after I watched the film and did a bit of research.

I love Ghostwatch for many reasons, but most of all, I love it because it was planned, written, and executed simply to have something fun to play on Halloween night. Normal scripted shows will often incorporate Halloween into one of their plots, much like "The Simpsons" continues to do with their annual Treehouse of Horror episodes; "Ghost Adventures" and "Ghost Hunters" will perform a "live" investigation to honor the dark night. But you hardly ever see a program being created from scratch to pay tribute to October 31st. It feels like a perfect melded concoction of paint-by-numbers television and reality - and all to give viewers something a little spooky to watch as they put to bed another Halloween night. I'd love for a major network to put something like this together - to concoct a Ghostwatch of their own. Found footage has never been more popular than it is right now, and with the format being applied to television with the likes of "The River" and "The Lost Tapes," I'm surprised this program hasn't been snapped up for some kind of Americanization. Is it because we've become jaded towards Halloween? Do American studios instead want to focus on seeing a Halloween-themed episode of "The Kardashians" as each of the spoiled divas dress like a slutty witch and say something inherently racist?

Ghostwatch has become annual and essential Halloween viewing in my home. If you're able to find it, I'm sure it'll become a part of yours, too.

Read a retrospective article on Ghostwatch and its legacy - recollected by the cast and crew.

HAUNTED CHANGI (2012)

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a group of filmmakers set out to make a documentary about a creepy, isolated, abandoned location where ghosts and ghoulies and long-legged beasties are said to romp and rave and eat human skin…and then the filmmakers find out that stuff is all true OMG! In that regard, Haunted Changi is nothing new. Following The Blair Witch Project beat-for-beat, we meet our filmmaker characters, they interview locals about the legends of Changi Hospital, and then the investigation begins.

Good news, though: Haunted Changi, shot entirely on location at the real titular hospital in Singapore, is actually pretty decent. It won’t knock your socks off with its originality (or lack thereof), and except for a few scares, it’s nothing you haven’t seen before. But found-footage fans should find it a worthy addition to the sub-genre, as it produces some nice scares and features a lot of pretty Asian women.

Andrew is our director. He seems down-to-earth enough, and isn’t nearly as bullheaded as Heather from The Blair Witch Project. Sheena is the producer/narrator of the project. She may or may not be completely, head-over-heels in love with Andrew. Farid is the soundman. If ever there were a Singaporean surfer hipster, it’s definitely him. Lastly we have Audi, our cameraman who handles the bulk of the documentary’s filming.

Their project is a documentary on Changi Hospital—once a military barracks during the 1930s/40s, and subsequently a military prison camp before finally becoming a general hospital until closing in 1997. It’s a legitimately creepy place, and once you hear the stories of all the horrors that took place within its crumbling walls – namely the torture of prisoners and the mass beheadings of Chinese natives – the place becomes even creepier.

As is always the case with premises like these, shit gets real.

The Good

For the most part, our characters come across as real kids. They crack jokes and mug for the camera. They are fledgling amateur filmmakers determined to make a documentary on a very creepy legend that has permeated their home since World War 2. That includes walking the long-abandoned hospital’s hallways and tunnels…

Haunted Changi tells the story in a different way—this time, the characters don’t walk into their creepy location never to come out again; likewise, the characters go in and out several times. But what sets Haunted Changi apart from its brethren is the psychology behind it all—what their entrance into Changi Hospital does to our characters’ psyches. And the movie allows us to see that—it no longer becomes a case of screaming “don’t go in that room!” at the screen, but rather, “don’t go back inside that place you moron!”

The movie opens with a well-done snippet from the documentary that the kids are working on, which is an interesting and unique start to the film. It’s a brief, five-minute introduction that provides the audience with all the back-story they would need on Changi Hospital to appreciate the creep that is soon to follow. Part of me wishes the entire runtime of Haunted Changi had actually been an expanded version of this introduction, as it was well done and morbidly fascinating.

One of the joys of watching films from another part of the world – horror especially – is the inclusion of unique and culturally specific legends and myths you’d otherwise not have previous knowledge about. In this case, I speak of the “pontianak,” a vampire ghost, which is said to haunt the hospital…

Begin Spoilers.

…in the form of a Chinese native who has made the old hospital her home. For part of the movie, Andrew is the only one among them to have met this character. To him, nothing about her is strange or aloof. He has no inkling of what she really is.

The pontianak does pretty much what you’d expect it to—attaches itself to a host and gradually sucks the life from it…but because it’s a ghost, there’s no way to fight it. It is this creature that begins to affect our characters in different ways: Andrew falls victim to her first, and becomes a mumbling, giggling fool toward the end of the movie. He begins to go almost mad, having totally fallen under her spell. Farid, too, becomes sick—too weak to even leave his home. Sheena, however, becomes furious at the notion that Andrew seems to be “involved” with this Chinese native, and the group nearly disassembles by film’s end.

End Spoilers.

The Bad

While Singapore is a territory that utilizes twenty different languages, their primary language is English. Despite this surprising fact, our English-speaking cast does not speak 100% comfortably in this tongue. To avoid sounding like a complete ignoramus, I disclose that I am clearly not from Singapore, so I can’t speak with great confidence as to the languages our actors know and don’t know. All I can say is this: their English isn’t the best – not their understanding of it, but their delivery of it – and at times it became a disservice. For a movie like this, the characters have to seem absolutely genuine, or else it just won’t work. Because it’s shot to look real, it has to feel real, and when it becomes clear that some of the actors aren’t entirely comfortable with some of the English dialogue, it takes you right out of the movie. Based on the cast’s delivery of their lines, it leads me to believe that they normally utilize another native language with which they are more comfortable. Perhaps shooting in English was a decision made early on in an effort to make the movie more appealing to a wider range of territories. (Let’s face it, us ‘Mericans don’t like to read.) If that’s the case, then it’s a forgivable decision. But let’s just say I’m glad the DVD came with subtitles.

My only other real complaint about the film would be the ending. It’s not a bad one—not at all…but I wanted more. Found footage movies tend to throw everything and the kitchen sink at you during their last five to ten minutes. And while Haunted Changi does show you more during the ending than it did previously throughout the movie, it leaves you feeling unsatisfied. For instance, the groundwork for mass beheadings has already been laid—and while this is exploited during the movie for a clever and creepy scene, it feels as if it could have been exploited just a bit more. I’m not saying include a scene of a headless body chasing our characters down the hallway with blood shooting from the neck…but maybe – far, far down the hall – have the kids see a barely visible headless specter quickly pass from one doorway through another.

But that’s just me. I like dudes with no heads.

The Low Down

Found footage movies all follow one basic framework to tell their stories: meet the characters, learn the history of their investigation, see the characters die. It is a tried-and-true formula that, to me, is generally a recipe for success. Are all of these movies basically the same? Sure, you could say that. But as far as I’m concerned, a decent movie is a decent movie. If it’s a concept I’ve seen a hundred times, I don’t care—so long as it’s well told, written, and acted. Also, creep helps.

THE AMITYVILLE HAUNTING (2011)

Holy shit.

What's that expression? Something about putting a bunch of monkeys and typewriters into a locked room and eventually they'll write Shakespeare?

Sixty-five films in, the monkeys over at mini distributor The Asylum are still hurling turds.

The Amityville Haunting portrays, found-footagely, the Benson family moving into 112 Ocean Avenue. There's Doug (the angry Marine father), Virginia (professional wife and mother), Lori (the generic bitchy teen daughter who spends the entire movie texting), Tyler (the shaggy-haired middle child/our cameraman), and Melanie (the generic youngest daughter who communicates with the ghosts while simultaneously doing nothing to dispel the stereotype of the shitty child actor). They move in, last five days, test your patience, and then die. (Spoiler.)

For those of you who don't know about The Asylum, they are an ultra low-budget production and distribution house that primarily support the horror genre. They've been in the business for over ten years, and in that time, they've developed a reputation for producing "mockbusters," which are rip-offs of more popular—and generally better—mainstream films. And when I say rip-off, I don't mean that Apollo 18 is a rip-off of Paranormal Activity. I mean that in the same year Sony released Battle: Los Angeles and The Da Vinci Code, The Asylum released Battle IN Los Angeles and The Da Vinci Treasure. When Marvel Films released Thor, suddenly Almighty Thor existed.

The Asylum even produced a movie with this log line:  

A race of alien robots has conquered the Earth and forced humanity underground. After three hundred years of domination, a small group of humans develop a plan to defeat the mechanical invaders in the ultimate battle between man and machine. 

It is so very shamelessly called Transmorphers.

There are numerous other examples, but I believe you get the point. The Asylum have built a business from these "mockbusters," which began once they claimed to have grown disillusioned by Hollywood going creatively bankrupt and remaking every IP under the sun they either owned or licensed. While I can't say I disagree with that assessment, I will say one thing: creatively bankrupt remakes and reboots aside, those studios at least had legal ownership to make those movies in the first place. The Asylum, obviously, do not, which is why they've been sued a couple times but also not nearly enough. 

The Amityville Haunting was announced not too long after another, more legitimate project was announced called The Amityville Horror: The Lost Tapes. What was supposed to serve as a quasi-sequel to the 2005 Ryan Reynolds-starring Amityville Horror remake was put into turnaround soon after its initial announcement, I believe due to the then-financial woes of MGM. The Asylum snapped up this concept and shot their own version...and from the looks of things, in a single battery charge. Aping what was obviously going to be the concept, we have The Amityville Horror meets Paranormal Activity.

While it suffers from the same ailments that plague most low budget horror films (terrible acting, a terrible script, terrible pacing, and a rudimentary attempt to jazz up the execution in hopes to cover the bad odor of those three previous terrible things), I freely admit that I became genuinely freaked during the movie for reasons I'll get into later. No bullshit—that happened.

As previously mentioned, your host is unfortunately a very precocious child named Tyler. His camera-handling skills are about as adept as a dead man's ability to jazzercise. Numerous times during the film he defends his decision to film everything with the excuse, "It's for my documentary," with nary an explanation as to what his stupid fucking documentary could possibly be about besides the inside of his new house. He also says "I hate it when no one believes me!" at least three times to himself while padding around his stupid house in his stupid socks. Over the course of five days, he never changes his clothes. Not a single time.

"I'm gonna mumble about ghosts for thirty minutes while
someone plays video games loudly in the background and my
mother makes dinner. Then I'm gonna put this on Youtube and
people are gonna care for some reason and turn me into a millionaire."

When the Benson family first tours the Amityville house and decide to buy it, the realtor goes outside and is immediately killed. Man, I knew the current real estate market was hurting, but I didn't think it was full-on murder!

Click me!

Tyler tells us the realtor has died of an "anerism," but still, "it's really weird!" Later, he overhears a conversation between the parents about the house's history—namely the 1974 DeFeo murders that started this whole mess in the first place—and decides the house must be haunted. While tempting to commend the filmmakers for setting this film outside of the Amityville universe we all know and loathe, meaning the eight films, and having it be "the real house" in which the DeFeo murders took place, you'll soon realize that a legal loophole allowed them to make this movie since it's based on an historical event (and hence, not trademarked) without having their asses sued off by franchise-owner MGM. I should also mention that the house where the movie takes place is clearly nowhere near the same shape, size, or in the same location as the “real” Amityville house.

The Amityville Haunting goes to great lengths to establish that much horror has occurred at 112 Ocean Avenue, first in the form of a nervous realtor and later a suspicious detective who later shows up and really wants to know why the hell the family would choose to live in such a terrible house. Despite this, when Tyler asks three moving men in the beginning of the film about the "Amityville house" and its legend, the three men laugh, never having heard of such a thing. The black mover even makes a joke about black people dying first in horror movies. One of the other movers responds, "You better watch out, then!" even though the black guy just made the same goddamn joke.

The Amityville Haunting desperately tries to ape the Paranormal Activity formula while failing miserably. Paranormal Activity features escalating levels of creep and leads to a final-act death of a lead character. It's a subtle film that takes its time, and effectively so. The Amityville Haunting, however, kills six people within the first fifteen minutes (one of whom is enigmatically named Reddit), and yet you still manage to stop caring about anything happening in the film almost immediately. 

Many of the events are excruciatingly dull, and those that aren't manage to be interesting only because of the pedestrian manner in which they are executed. At no point do the ghosts look like actual ghosts, but rather bored actors in thrift store suits with a splash of blood across their faces. The one ghost that Melanie interacts with the entire movie, whose name alternates between John Matthews and John Matthew, is just some random kid who sits on the floor, or at the table, and wears very modern clothes. No blood—not even white powder slapped across his face to make him appear the least bit unnatural. He's just...some kid.

Realtor, this is one of my annoying children.

And that's my other annoying child, but in boy form.

Based on how the characters interact, I can only assume a very loose script was used, allowing actors to bounce dialogue off each other and improvise in the moment—and by this I mean they randomly speak over each other's lines so most of the dialogue never sounds genuine.

For instance:

Mother: (pointing out son who is filming) Don't mind him, he thinks he's the next Steven Spielberg. He films everything.

Realtor: Oh, don't we all?

My personal favorite exchange comes during the second act when the father discovers his teen daughter, Lori, has been sneaking out late at night to see a boy from the neighborhood. Sitting at the table with a police officer, this masterful wordplay ensues:

Father: My daughter has been sneaking out with...this kid.

Cop: I bet it was that kid!

- "It was that kid, right?"
- "It was that kid!"
- "That fucking kid!"
- "That...fucking...kid."

At one point, Tyler has Melanie ask the ghost what it wants. The ghost then tells Melanie, who tells her brother, "he wants you, Mommy, and Daddy to leave, and he wants me to stay here forever." Quite a burn for Lori, who is apparently destined for neither leaving the house, nor staying. Have you ever tried being nowhere? It's really hard.

As you can imagine, the scary events in the house escalate, leading to a terrifying conclusion. Now see, I said "you can imagine" because you'd have to, as that doesn't actually happen here. Things remain painfully dull up until the last second, in which each family member is murdered in completely unimaginative (and off-screen) ways.

The movie ends with close-ups of "coroner's investigation reports" for each family member killed. An official cause of death for one of the family members reads: heart and lung “separtion."

Foolishly, I really wanted to give The Asylum the benefit of the doubt. First of all, at the end of the day, they manage to make movies. That's something most of us wish we could do, and for those of us that have, we know it's not a terribly easy thing to accomplish. Not to mention that The Asylum's usual budgets are never that big, which doesn't make things easier for them. Regardless, they sometimes manage to attract people worth a damn (Lance Henriksen, for instance). I was hoping that the ability for them to spend even less on a movie by making a found footage flick would, in turn, allow them to focus more on the script and telling a good story. Sadly, I was wrong. Not only is the movie incompetently made in almost every general sense, I am really starting to feel like we’re all being had. I feel contempt from these filmmakers. I feel like they are laughing at us all in some Andy Kauffman-esque way. Why won’t they try? Why won’t they attempt to make something that’s good? Just by odds alone, that should have happened by now.

Oh, right. The thing I mentioned earlier that completely freaked me out? During the movie, I went into the other room and one of my flameless LED candles had turned on by itself!

How did it DO that??

Terrible.

REVIEW: 7 NIGHTS OF DARKNESS

On paper, 7 Nights of Darkness shouldn’t have worked. And it barely did. It was low budget to the nth degree, and Allen Kellogg is not only credited as the lead actor, but also the writer, director, producer, and editor. Ed Wood should have just flashed through your head, as he did mine while the credits of 7 Nights rolled. The film, on its own merits, wasn’t bad. It doesn’t come anywhere near the heights of its POV-ghost-hunting brethren like Paranormal Activity or Grave Encounters, but it could easily have been just another piece of shit direct-to-video trash hole.

I give Kellogg semi-credit for finally committing to film an obvious premise like ghost hunters investigating a supposedly haunted building and actually coming across real ghosts(!) That may come across as a slight against the film (and I guess it kind of is), but seriously…it’s about time someone finally brought that concept to a film. That premise was just hanging around in the air, waiting for someone to grab at it and nail it down. And while it would be easy to just accuse 7 Nights of being a rip-off of the very similarly themed Grave Encounters (which was shot in 2009 and made film festival rounds for nearly two years), I have enough knowledge of low budget filmmaking to know that small, passion projects like these can sometimes take years to complete. In this case, I’ll give 7 Nights the benefit of the doubt that this premise came about organically, and its creator could only say, “oh, God damn it,” when news of Grave Encounters began making the rounds.

The plot is fairly simple: six folks (four dudes, two chicks) are chosen to spend seven nights in Madison Seminary, an abandoned and allegedly haunted building. Those who remain in the building all seven nights will be rewarded with a million dollars to split between them. They are to film everything at all times, and they are to complete a task assigned to them each night they are there. Failure to follow these orders will be considered non-compliance, and the offer becomes void.

Needless to say, the inhuman sounds begin, as do the fuzzy sightings of something leering in the corner. The creepy set pieces begin to escalate…and people start to disappear.

The Good:

Kellogg as a director does a nice job of working well within his budget and manages to create some genuinely creepy moments—some of which you may see coming, but are still effective, anyway. (Fuck that doll.)

Kellogg as a writer is also quite competent. At no point does any character ever do something beyond belief—and one of them even surprises you with a clever revelation of their own. Everyone reacts how one should react (well, mostly…until the end)—and this is a real service to the film.

The ending is quite Blair Witch-inspired (let’s face it, no one ever survives the found footage sub-genre, do they?), and if you’re watching the film under the right circumstances, it’s a satisfyingly creepy conclusion to the journey.

The Bad:

I’ve seen a lot of garbage over the years—ranging from the A-list to off-the-alphabet low budgeters that offend you with the thought of their very existence. When 7 Nights began, I honestly thought it didn’t have a prayer. The caliber of acting in the film becomes painfully clear almost immediately, and my own personal prejudice against low budget horror admittedly made me discard the idea that Kellogg purposely attempted to fill his cast with “real” people instead of raiding a local community acting troupe. While I won’t say the performances are across-the-board bad (Meredith Kochan’s Brooke comes across as very natural and believable), let’s just say some of these folks need to seriously reconsider their future as actors. Kellogg’s own performance as Carter left a lot to be desired: His “natural” attempts at humor came across as forced and utterly obnoxious, and for me he was nearly the most unlikeable character in the film. (That honor goes to Todd, played by Mick Garris doppelganger Larry Nehring, who [betraying my role as a “professional” reviewer for a moment], acts like a total bitch from his first minute until his last.) At one point in the film, when one of the film’s characters insists on investigating a crawl space under a set of stairs, Kellogg’s Carter literally repeats derivates of ”wait,” “stop,” and “don’t go in there,” so many times I literally wanted to rip the DVD out of my player and throw it at my neighbor’s dog. By the time Carter’s tearful third-act revelation in his private diary video entry takes place, which would have been a great service in establishing sympathy, it is too little, too late. And despite his desire to become “the leader” of the remaining characters, he spends the rest of the movie hiding in a room and begging everyone to just stay there with him.

Lastly – and this is more nit-picky than anything else – why is this film taking place in a seminary? At no point in the film is religion mentioned – nor anything having to do with priests. But what we do see, however, is a medical chair allegedly used for lobotomies. Why is this chair in a seminary? Did the filmmakers suffer a brain fart and call it Madison Seminary when they really meant Madison Sanitarium? Or am I just a dumb ass who was asleep when this chapter was discussed during Common Sense 101? 

The Low Down:

All in all, I’ve seen a lot worse in this sub-genre. It’s certainly better than both Apollo 18 and Atrocious—two POV flicks that received much more attention and were actually turgid wastes of every filmmaking-related resource. In the right frame of mind, and if you’re forgiving of supremely low budget films, this is a gem, while unpolished, that is still worth your time.

Grade: B–

REVIEW: THE TUNNEL

I have one eye keenly focused on Australian horror. And while Wolf Creek came out to great acclaim several years back, and that same director’s Rogue was a fun splash of giant alligatorism, found footage movies are a whole horse of a different color (as is always the case with me). To date, I have seen two Australian found footage movies: Lake Mungo, and now, The Tunnel. To date, both have rocked.

I really can’t get into the actual mechanics of The Tunnel without first shedding light on something important: its marketing campaign. The Tunnel prides itself on being almost entirely fan-funded—an honorary (and sole) member of the self-proclaimed “$135K Project.” A pledge was made to send each person who donated money to the production at least an individual frame of the movie; and the higher the pledge, the bigger the reward/accolade. A goal of a $135,000 production budget was set in place…and it was matched. But why is this important enough to mention? Because upon the film’s completion, it was uploaded to the web for a limited time…by the filmmakers…for free consumption. It was downloaded over a million times. For a major studio, this would be a crushing blow. For a small, grassroots campaign, this is a victory.

I don’t know about you, but if I read somewhere that I could download someone’s movie for free—with no legal ramifications whatsoever—I would be a little hesitant. Thoughts of shoddy movies sold in those cheap slim line cases spilling off dollar store shelves and Target end caps come to mind. I mean, have you seen some of the awful dreck some studios actually paid for, and want YOU to pay for? So if the filmmakers of The Tunnel were just giving this thing away for free, how good could it be?

Pretty good. Great, actually.

Its setup won’t exactly knock your socks off with its originality—every movie of this ilk owes its existence to The Blair Witch Project, which will always be the watermark in the found footage sub-genre—but The Tunnel is told in a not-so-traditional manner. Much like Lake Mungo, The Tunnel is not just 90 minutes of characters wandering around in the dark and being terrorized by an off-screen monstrosity. Sure, that happens, but layered through the movie are sit-down interviews with our characters discussing their harrowing ordeal. As the movie draws out, and we take mental attendance of each character giving an epilogue-ish interview, we already know who will survive the events down in the tunnel…and who won’t. Some might see this as a detractor; others not. In the case of Lake Mungo, which depended on an entirely different story, I did not find this technique to be a detractor—in fact, it was a strength. It allowed the characters more time to convey just how the events of the film affected them on an emotional level. With The Tunnel, which is supposed to be a more visceral, in-your-face experience, I’m not so sure the technique works in its favor…

Investigative journalist Natasha Warner leads a three-man film crew down into an unused tunnel system beneath the streets of Sydney to follow up on plans suspiciously abandoned by the government to utilize an untouched water source in order to combat an ongoing drought plaguing the city. The death knell for these plans seemed to immediately follow the city's process in locating and removing the many homeless who had made the underground tunnels their homes, and the suspicious nature in which the plans were scrapped set Natasha’s journalistic mind reeling. In the movie she states: “When something goes unspoken, I have to ask why. That’s my job as a journalist.” And so her investigation begins.

Upon interviewing a homeless man named Trevor, whom she deduced was living in the tunnels, the crew is startled by his extreme emotional outburst that sends him running from his chair and into far corners of the room, crying and ripping at the walls with his fingernails...all in response to the question, “Has something bad happened to you down there?” It’s a great moment that lets both the audience and our characters know that there’s something under those streets the government does not want to deal with, nor even acknowledge.

With her production crew behind her (Pete, producer; Steven, cameraman; “Tangles,” soundman), she leads the descent into the darkness…and to the unimaginable thing that begins to stalk them one by one.

Our story-chasing news crew feels genuine, and we learn about each character in a very organic manner. It’s important for this kind of movie that each of them are likable, and that the actors playing them are believable. The Tunnel nails this with ease, introducing each character and detailing the relationships they all share with each other—which is to say, complicated. Natasha’s desire to descend into the tunnels is fueled by the notion she needs to prove herself as a journalist, and this impulse to do so may very well be clouding her judgment. Steve considers her to be a flavor of the week, never considering her to be a “real journalist.” He also alludes to Natasha having had a sexual relationship with both Pete as well as their boss, and while this is never verified, Steven is all too willing to believe it with a cocksure smile on his face.

Lazy exposition is a detriment to a film, and that is never a fault in The Tunnel. Through the aforementioned sit-down interviews, the POV footage, as well as news broadcasts, we learn the ins and outs of the story—all of it is presented in a very believable manner.

Now that our conflict is firmly established, we now ask ourselves: do our characters have a valid reason for doing what they are doing? Have they provided enough reasoning for going down into the icky, gooey sewer that makes homeless men cry? Well, being that they are journalists and they see the chance to blow the lid off a government conspiracy (and what journalists out there don’t want to be the next Woodward and Bernstein?) then yes, they have perfectly suitable reasons for going down into the dark. Steven states in the movie: “As a film crew, it’s our job to film and get coverage. It’s not our job to [question orders].” So in this case, we don’t need to be force-fed the reasoning behind their descent into the dark. What we’re given is more than suitable.

Once down in the tunnels, the action respectfully and believably escalates. The noises begin, as do the blurry “what the fuck was that?” sightings of something whisking past a corner. The characters become unfocused, lost, and pissed off. Tensions begin to rise. And then the creature makes its appearance. Here we come to the biggest complaint about found footage movies: Why, when the movie's antagonist makes its appearance, does the cameraman keep filming? Why don't they just drop the camera and run screaming from their adversary? Why do they still hold the camera even when they are trying to help a friend who is being violently attacked by their stalker? Well, as Steven explains earlier in the film, the act of going down into the tunnel never jibed with him—especially after Natasha attempted to bribe the security guard to allow them access, leading them to have to basically break in—so he decided then and there to film everything that happened, making Natasha liable for any legalities they may have occurred. Whether you like and accept that argument or not, at least the filmmakers thought far enough ahead to acknowledge it—something most found footage movies leave undisturbed.

Speaking of the creature, here is where my second and last real complaint of the film comes into play: The Tunnel is inconvenienced by not having more shots of the slimy thing slithering around in the dark. And I don’t mean the film needed a well-lit shot of the creature in all its glory—so clear and focused that I could count its testicles. I didn’t need to SEE the thing clearly. I just needed to see it more often. When the cameras capture brief glimpses of the creature in the dark—and its eyes glow green in the camera’s night vision—it’s creepy. The creature’s visage is captured just enough for you to get a basic idea—something almost human, yet not—but not enough so that it destroys the image your imagination has created after filling in the gaps. For me personally, I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up during these scenes…and I wanted just a bit more. And while this may not be entirely accurate, when I think back, it seems as if the creature isn’t featured all that much. And when that feeling becomes more and more insistent, it feels as if the movie missed a huge opportunity to be more memorable. Despite this, and for such a low budget, the movie is remarkably well made, well acted, and creepy at times.

As previously mentioned, once you can see what kind of technique the movie is employing, the presence of the majority of our main characters during their sit-down interviews ruins some of the tension created in the tunnels. “Oh, so-and-so lives,” etc. Lake Mungo gets away with this technique because 90-95% of that movie is created with sit down interviews; The Tunnel depends on more traditional POV thrills to tell its story, and so it becomes a different monster altogether.

The filmmakers have openly stated they chose this technique in order to differentiate it from other films in the sub-genre, and I can truly respect that. However, I think it’s okay for your movie to be a little more familiar, so long as you're not sacrificing tension and scares. A strong story and strong characters can make even the most tired of premises come alive in a fresh new way, and The Tunnel accomplishes this handily.

While I can honestly say I look forward to the future endeavors of these filmmakers, part of me selfishly wishes they would make another found footage flick. They are clearly capable of creating something really god damn good, and while The Tunnel doesn’t quite reach that level, it comes pretty close.

The Tunnel has been available for some time in a hard-copy 2-disc format (for the more ardent supporters of the film), and comes with a bevy of special features (which can be bought here). Also available is a single-disc release, featuring audio commentary by the director and producer, which can be nabbed here.

GRADE: A-

UNSUNG HORRORS: LAKE MUNGO

Every once in a while, a genuinely great horror movie—one that would rightfully be considered a classic, had it gotten more exposure and love at the box office—makes an appearance. It comes, no one notices, and it goes. But movies like this are important. They need to be treasured and remembered. If intelligent, original horror is supported, then that's what we'll begin to receive, in droves. We need to make these movies a part of the legendary genre we hold so dear. Because these are the unsung horrors. These are the movies that should have been successful, but were instead ignored. They should be rightfully praised for the freshness and intelligence and craft that they have contributed to our genre.

So, better late than never, we’re going to celebrate them now… one at a time.

Dir. Joel Anderson

2008

Lionsgate Films

Australia

“Liked found footage movies” could one day be etched on my tombstone, and not only because it’s true, but also because I’ve spent most of my blog systematically beating those words to death. But I do. I like found footage movies. Except for rare, rare gems like Insidious, it’s become almost impossible to make a traditional narrative film that effectively scares. Most filmmakers, despite their best intentions, just don’t know how to do that. They claim to know. They claim to use “Hitchcockian” techniques (a term I have grown to loathe). Really what this means, however, is that they reenact the Psycho shower scene, but instead of leaving it to your imagination, they show you heads falling off and geysers of blood. Something about the way found footage movies are made easily manipulate the viewer. All bets are off, really. So long as you have a valid reason for why your cameraman hasn’t long dropped the camera in fear instead of stoically filming the gigantic King Kong-sized monster standing above him in Central Park, then you have the freedom to pretty much show whatever you want and get away with it. And not only that, but even the most mundane things seem creepy. You see a dark room, and in that dark room you see a darker shape suddenly move in the corner. Already you can feel the chill ride down your spine. You wait for it to materialize, to be something with malicious intent. Found footage movies are that one scene in your traditional horror movie where a character is walking around the corner and the music is mounting—only it’s like that for the entire running time. Once that first creepy thing happens, anything can happen at any time.

Movies like Australia’s Lake Mungo are a rare bird. Not only are found footage movies still rare when compared to the number of more traditional stuff that gets greenlit every day, Lake Mungo takes it one step further: instead of the movie seemingly taking place in real time as characters stumble around the dark, the movie is comprised of sit-down interviews with the main characters as they reflect on the events that inspired the “documentary”—events that have already taken place. Yes…Mom, Dad, and Brother aren’t risking being possessed by ghosts or sliced in half by zombies run amok. The event that triggered this “documentary”—the horror the characters endured—is already behind them. (One comparison that immediately comes to mind is Bryan Singer’s Valkyrie, a movie about the assassination attempt of Adolf Hitler—something the world knows never came to fruition, yet watching the attempt unfold still manages to be incredibly suspenseful, anyway.) In short, we spend the entire running time with characters that are not in any danger.

And despite that, it never fails to make the movie any less creepy.

The movie begins with the death of sixteen-year-old Alice Palmer (perhaps a nod to Twin Peaks’ Laura Palmer, yet another doomed teen girl whose own death was a mystery) after her drowning at a local lake, her family’s vacation spot (which, before you get ahead of yourself, was not the titular lake). Naturally her family is torn apart by the incident, and with her death taking place just a few days before Christmas, they each walk around in a stupor, unwilling to believe that the worst has happened. Each of them deal with Alice’s death in a different way: Dad goes back to work in an attempt to keep busy; Mom refuses to accept that her daughter has indeed passed on and is instead merely missing (Dad, only, identified the body); and Mathew, Alice’s brother, embraces his hobby of photography more than ever. But despite their different ways of mourning, all of them soon come together when they begin to experience the same thing: the potential haunting of their home by Alice’s ghost.

Lake Mungo plays like your typical “Dateline” special, utilizing the aforementioned sit-down interviews with immediate and extended family and friends, as well as home movies and photographs to tell its story. It honestly all plays out so realistically—even when the supernatural elements come into play—that it really feels like something you might watch one night on a news channel. 

The supernatural elements come into play once Mathew kicks his photograph hobby into high gear. Images of Alice seem to show up everywhere—inside the house as well as outside in the backyard. Because of this, Matt begins to set up a stationary video camera (pre-dating Paranormal Activity) to see if he can capture anything of note. What he captures is Alice.

It’s important to note that while Lake Mungo isn’t a full-fledged horror movie per se, that doesn’t mean it has no intention of trying to scare you, because it does. Again and again. But it chooses its moments to do so, so that when they do occur, it is far more shocking than it would normally be. Five minutes of creepy footage mixed into 85 other minutes of other creepy footage is just footage. It gets lost. But five minutes of creepy footage woven into a narrative about mourning and regret becomes jarring and real. And that’s what this movie is, really: a reflection on loss, and dealing with death, and with facing the notion that you can never truly know someone if they don’t want you to. There’s a great line in the film spoken by Alice’s best friend: “Alice kept secrets. She kept the fact that she kept secrets a secret.” Because as the story unfolds, we begin to realize that Alice was not the person her family believed her to be. And while such a proclamation immediately makes one assume Alice was in actuality a devious character, or a murderer, or something worse, that’s not the case here at all. It’s just that the Palmer family didn’t know everything about Alice they should have…and maybe Alice regretted that. Maybe, in death, Alice wanted her family to know who she truly was—her good faults as well as her bad.

The acting in this film is across-the-board fantastic and convincing. With a movie like this, one false performance can derail the proceedings. Because if you don’t believe what you’re seeing has happened, or could potentially happen, then you, the viewer, are left behind. No one in the film appears as if they are giving a “performance”—they just sell what has to be sold, which is that they are a grieving family undergoing strange events in their home and trying to make sense of it all.

While the movie’s running time is 10% “found footage,” and while a large portion of that “found footage” is simply every-day video taken by various family members over the years, there remains a scene, created with a cell phone video camera, that is extremely unnerving. It is the strength of this scene that demands Lake Mungo be included with the other found footage heavyweights The Blair Witch Project, Cannibal Holocaust, and Paranormal Activity. I know that a lot of folks out there disown movies like BWP and PA because, frankly, “You don’t see anything! They never show you the witch/ghost!” Well, number one, those people are foolish, anyway. And number two, Lake Mungo does indeed show you the villain—the antagonist. It shows you the force that has come and stolen the life of a young girl and left her family in tatters. It shows you death, coming at you from the darkness of Lake Mungo in shaky, blurry two-inch-by-two-inch camera phone video. It’s a scene that will literally chill you, and stay with you long after the movie is finished.

Lake Mungo was released in 2008 as part of the generally terrible After Dark Horror Fest/8 Horror Movies to Die For platform. For the uninitiated, these consist mainly of movies that are basically direct-to-video low-budgeters that are randomly picked and marketed as “the movies they didn’t want you to see.” Well, that’s partly true…because most of them are pretty terrible. And it feels dirty to see Lake Mungo bare the same banner as Lake Dead and Monster Man, two of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. Soon after its release in 2008, it was announced that the producers of The Ring remake would be shepherding a remake of Lake Mungo, due for release in 2011. With 2011 coming to an end in less than two months and the movie not even entering pre-production, hopefully this is an idea long abandoned. While the movie is perfect just the way it is anyway, the damn thing is also in easily understandable, Australian-accented, English. And unless they were to pump recognizable faces into the American remake (which would defeat the whole purpose of this movie trying to feel real in the first place), why on earth would you bother?

I love horror movies. I’ve seen more horror movies than anyone I know. When I was a kid, and other kids my age were watching The Goonies, I was watching Friday the 13th or its derivatives. Whenever our family went to an uncle/aunt’s house for a holiday, it wasn’t long before I was sneaking away to watch whatever horror movies (on VHS, no less) they had in their cabinets. (This is how I first came to see Night of the Living Dead, Re-Animator, and A Nightmare on Elm Street.)

I say this to you because of the quite literally thousands of horror movies I have seen, only three have ever actually affected me: The Exorcist, The Blair Witch Project, and Lake Mungo. That’s pretty good company, I say. And I truly mean it. I look at a movie like Lake Mungo, and I see everything horror fans claim to want—real performances, real terror, intelligent writing, a supreme lack of horror clichés, and absolutely no pandering to its audience—and I wonder why more people do not know about this movie. Frankly, it’s a goddamn shame. It’s an unsung horror. 

(Oh yeah...be sure to watch the closing credits.)