The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007)

The Poughkeepsie Tapes is on Tubi right now! Tubi comes through again!

After a serial killer leaves a cache of tapes to be discovered by New York murder investigators, we're shown "choice cuts" of the decades of footage; from the disturbing to the horrific, to the downright weird, while context and background are given on those featured.

Ya girl got some spoilers ⬇

We watched this on the brink of my being home alone for a couple of nights, and I'm REALLY pleased I didn't save it for then. And not because of the strange balloon stuff.

At this point, this film had become somewhat infamous to me, and I wasn't quite sure what to expect. What I got was a fictitious crime documentary that's often downright uncomfortable to watch. One scene in particular I couldn't get out of my head for a couple of days. Many aspects - including, obviously, the fact that it's found footage - contribute to this feeling very grounded in reality. 

Full of bleak moments and clips of terror and torture, this story is successfully very, very creepy. A thread that runs through it is one particular female victim (Stacy Chbosky as Cheryl Dempsey) and her abduction, imprisonment and forced complicity through physical and mental torture. 

Her interview and the information we're subsequently told about Cheryl is shattering. Hell, her entire story is shattering. This is probably the film's strongest aspect as it gives a heart to the story - even if it ultimately dissects that heart in front of our eyes.

❝I don't know what you want me to say...❞

− Cheryl Dempsey

As someone who deals with intrusive thoughts about home invasion (and yet watches horror movies and listens to true crime podcasts almost non-stop 👋🏻) the thought that his guy just moved on, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer style, and set up shop elsewhere is terrifying. The audience witnesses him begin, escalate, shatter countless lives through murder, torture and the justice system itself - then simply disappear. The only reason the police ever found the tapes was because he wanted them to.

The Poughkeepsie Tapes was shot in a staggering fifteen days, and was written (along with his brother Drew) and directed by John Erick Dowdle (As Above, So Below, Quarantine, Devil). He is also married to Stacy Chbosky. It must have been incredibly intense to direct her in some of these scenes.

If you like your scares stark, this is worth checking out. Not for those seeking buckets of blood; it's understated and implied a lot of the time, views often obscured or distorted so that we're forced to fill in the blanks. Nasty and unforgiving, if you're prone to movies sticking with you, this one just might.

Digging Up the Marrow (2014)

If you say "lower-budget passion project about monsters", I'm usually going to reply with "yes please". However, with Digging Up the Marrow, I'm having some slight viewer's remorse.

This "found footage" mockumentary is a strange mix of smug self-congratulation and geeky love letter from writer/director Adam Green. The creatures are drawn and designed by Alex Pardee and sculpted by Greg Aronowitz and they, along with the excellent Ray Wise, are the best thing about it.

We follow Green as he abandons writing duties for his then-popular (and real) TV show Holliston to go monster hunting with a man called William Dekker (Wise). Accompanying them is Green's real-life cinematographer and collaborator Will Barratt, who acts as camera man.

Wise was cast as an audience "signpost" of sorts so that they didn't get too convinced that this might be real and feel cheated at the first big reveal. While I get the logic of this, Wise's amazing, intense, wild-eyed self sits awkwardly next to literally everyone else onscreen. From Green's staff to cameos from other genre names, the acting in this is worse than daytime soaps. The dialogue, apparently scripted, does nothing to help matters as it's so uninteresting and long-winded that it comes across as bad improvisation.

This kind of criticism - and sadly, it's one I have with some regularity in this sub-section of horror - always makes me ponder the nature of "reality" a bit. Yes, the point of this is that it's meant to be amateur and real, so what's the problem? The problem is that to be enthralling and tense, this shit still needs a framework of considered, careful choices on which to drape its reality. As a filmmaker and horror obsessive himself, I would have assumed Green had better judgement than what is shown here.

And to get petty for a second, Green and his staff are almost exclusively shown wearing T-shirts advertising his own work... It's just a bit much? 

Is this a meta wink? Or does Digging Up the Marrow just have something in its eye?

And they all look brand new. I don't know why this irritated me so much.

This took five years to make, and I have to be brutal and ask, was it actually worth it? I see what he was trying to accomplish, but he just didn't get there soon enough or enough, enough, for my liking.

"Dig it up" on Shudder now. (...sorry).

The Borderlands / Final Prayer (2013)

2018 has been the year I don't quite understand what the fuss is about. See: Revenge, Hereditary (though that wasn't helped by a shitty viewing experience) and now that I've finally seen The Borderlands, this is the latest.

Don't get me wrong, I didn't hate or even dislike any of these movies. I just didn't seem to get from them what the vocal majority did. I know we're all allowed to have our own opinions, but it's pretty frustrating to be aware of a tidal wave of excitement over a movie that personally left you feeling more like "...that's it?".

So here we are at The Borderlands, or Final Prayer as it's been renamed for the US market. An English found footage flick and feature film directorial debut of Elliot Goldner (who also wrote it).

It follows a team of Vatican investigators as they set up camp in a small town to try and disprove a "miracle" that took place in the local church. The core group is made up of Deacon (Gordon Kennedy - always a pleasure to watch), Gray the tech guy (Robin Hill) and Mark, an uptight priest (Aidan McArdle).

They set up cameras all over the place and wear head-cams, so all of the footage we see is supposedly from these sources.

Which is fine... but the found footage aspect of this film seems more technique than theme, to be honest. There's no narrative book-ending or explanation as to how these cameras were found (a big question, given the denouement) or who edited it all together and/or what the purpose is of us watching it. I guess there doesn't always have to be a Blair Witch Project intro screen for these types of movies, but something to explain some context would be nice?

Nevertheless, we follow the investigations of these men as they scrutinise the church and hang out at their rented cottage. During the day there are weird happenings that Deacon and Mark, the most explicitly religious members of the group, are cynical of and try to explain away. Gray - who took this job purely for the money, and told a white lie about his faith - is way more spooked.

At night, more unsettling things happen, until ultimately the group find themselves performing a ceremony which doesn't exactly go to plan... culminating in a deeply uncomfortable final sequence. 

The main problem I had with this movie was that the gradual climb of the first two acts was too repetitive and slow. Despite definite moments of creepiness, the building of suspense just didn't hit the mark. The payoff here literally comes within the final few moments - rather than the entire film working as a whole in laying the groundwork, with an alarming finale as the cherry on top.

Perhaps on a re-watch I might feel differently?

Something The Borderlands did do successfully was make me miss the English countryside. We are shown a fair amount of it as the team drive around and traipse through fields. It gave me pangs!

I rented this one on Google Play, and I think it's available on Amazon, also. Give it a watch and tell me what I'm missing.

As Above, So Below (2014)

Well this fits nicely next to Verónica, because writer/director John Erick Dowdle also directed Quarantine, the American remake of [Rec]. It all ties in!

Maybe because it was actually filmed in the Paris catacombs, or that there are some genuine moments of "oh fuuuck", or that I was reminded that it follows Dante's Inferno... and maybe all three, but I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this the second time around.

This found footage flick follows a group as they break into the intensely claustrophobic catacombs that lie beneath Paris. They're searching, we're shown in annoying scenes of exposition/set-up, for a mysterious ancient stone and possibly treasure, too. Lead character Scarlett (Perdita Weeks) is a tomb-raider style daredevil daughter of some old bloke who discovered the secrets of alchemy. Or something. I dunno, it's not really that important.

On their underground adventures, Scarlett and her accumulated crew (including Ben Feldman, "Ginsberg" from Mad Men) find both the desired stone and loot, but in the process, they also encounter cults, violent apparitions of their past, and maybe even Satan himself.

Honestly, the plot is kind of secondary to what Dowdle is trying to achieve (down) here. 

Rather than do the decent thing of just losing their minds with fright after the first cave-in, the group continues on as they become repeatedly trapped and blocked in their passage through the catacombs; journeying deeper, further, squeezing through tiny tunnels and dropping down bottomless-looking pits.

For an atheist, I do still find religious/blasphemous-tinged horror pretty unnerving when done correctly (just ask Baskin) and so as the weary travellers realised they may be descending into Hell, I definitely found it an unnerving experience. The imposing darkness and impossibly labyrinthine routes they take don't help to un-jangle the nerves, either.

❝According to mythology, that's the inscription over the gates of hell.❞

 − Scarlett.

As the group thins, we learn more about what this system of caves really represent, and how the remaining individuals might escape. The aspect of the narrative with the mystical stone is absurd, but at least it allows for some more scares.

Two impressive set pieces have always stuck in my mind from this film, even when I initially wasn't convinced of its merits. The burning car deep underground, and the manhole cover scene at the film's end. For all the irritation I felt at Scarlett & Co. at times, the inventiveness and audacity to conceive of and execute both of these ideas is something I must tip my hat to. 

As Above, So Below is an effective, imaginatively claustrophobic nightmare punctuated by solid scares. It must have played brilliantly in a cinema environment.

Ignore the earnest jabbering at the beginning and stick with it, it's streaming on Netflix now.

I ❤ U The Blair Witch Project (1999)

The Blair Witch Project hits Shudder US today! To celebrate, I thought I'd jot down a Zombie Cupcake "take" on the movie, since I never actually have. After a recent re-watch I've been having some feels about this one!

For years I felt kind of embarrassed admitting I loved this film, but not any more. Watching it through recently, and then again with the thoroughly entertaining and informative commentary track, it clarified that this is definitely one of my favourite horror films for a few reasons. Over the years I confess feeling a tinge of embarrassment whenever I've been asked to name the scariest film I've ever seen... because honestly, nothing has ever come close to terrifying me as much as this did when I saw it in '99.

Yes, it's been something of a divisive movie ever since its release. The "slowness" of the story; the shaky-cam; the "why are they still filming" aspect and Heather being a "bitch"... Ugh, I don't agree but I get it. Like I said in my Blair Witch review though, whatever your opinion of The Blair Witch Project, you have to admit it was a milestone in horror history. 

Coming out of nowhere, successfully creating mystery around itself - the cast’s IMDB profiles had the actors labeled as "missing, presumed dead" for a full year! - and using the internet in a way that was unheard of at the time. This shit went viral before viral even existed.

"Missing" poster as marketing for the film.

Written and directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, the movie is a beautifully crafted piece of cinema where the more you learn about it, the more impressed you'll become. 

Compiled, as it claims to be, from the footage taken by Heather, Mike and Josh (Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams and Joshua Leonard) The Blair Witch Project was mostly shot over six days as the actors camped and hiked in the woods, working off of personal "this is your motivation" prompt notes left by the crew. What we see today is thanks to intelligent guidance, expert editing (the Sundance screening apparently showed a different cut) and immersed, improvised acting. The breaking-point exhaustion we see as the film advances was real, and by the final days the three were only given bare minimum food rations to increase their irritability and encourage more anxiety and conflict on film.

Heather (Heather Donahue)

Heather Donahue's casting is called the single best decision of the entire project, and is a powerful but often maligned force of a character in this film. I always had a fondness for her, but my appreciation of the depiction of her has only grown as I've gotten older. Heather is something of a control freak, and she knows what she wants and how she wants it (umm, I can relate). The word "project" is right there in the film's title, and it's her project. Much of the movie is taken from her point of view as she's the one that insists on keeping her camera rolling, even after things take a sinister turn.

Mike (Michael C. Williams)

We meet Heather as a pitch perfect self-righteous film maker, and we leave her running through that house screaming - the audio accompanying her footage coming from Mike's camera making it all fantastically disjointed and unreal - and finally, she's on the floor of the basement. Fade to black.

Much we take for granted in this movie was actually a decision made by the actors (or a happy accident) as they were left to their own devices. If, after reviewing the day's footage Myrick and Sánchez thought someone needed guiding in a slightly different direction, then that was done. But generally they took what the actors gave them, discarded what they thought didn't work (much more, much nastier bickering between the men and Heather found its way to the cutting room floor in an effort to make the audience more sympathetic towards them) and then they spun indie horror movie gold with the rest.

Josh (Joshua Leonard) who lost that sick tooth necklace in the woods :(

Did you know that some of the townspeople at the start were real townspeople from the area? The actors presented themselves in-character so they got natural reactions from the public. Some were plants, too; actors hired and given a story to tell. The stand-out, the lady with the little kid who says "no!" was a real person who made her tale up on the spot (and had to be tracked down to sign a release form!).

Many clever shot set-ups were accidental or actor-driven, rather than anything suggested by the directors. Heather's iconic confession was self-scripted, and the framing of this shot was by mistake. The Blair Witch Project is a wonderful combination of glorious group effort and luck.

As for my personal reaction, marketing and trivia aside, it still creeps me out to this day. When I first saw it I don't remember necessarily thinking it was real, but I did get completely sucked in by the found-footage approach - and remain to this day a fan of imaginative found-footage movies. Whether I was just unaccustomed to horror (or this kind of horror) on the big screen or whatever the reason may have been, I was in full foetal position in my seat with a pounding heart by the end of the movie. Definitely one of those moments you love/hate and spend years trying to recapture!

Even watching the collection of alternative endings (spoiler: none of them work as well as the one they chose) spooked me. There's just something about that final sequence; the hysterical screaming, the house, that basement... I still find it frightening.

It's so cool that Shudder is adding this to their catalogue. But don't forget that there are some great extras on the Blu-ray if you feel like owning it permanently. There are so many amazing little details given in the commentary (the "taco" code word if anyone needed to break character; the stick-man affectionately named Chewbacca) so if you are a fan, it's an excellent investment.

The sequel, Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 also hits Shudder today. I remember not being wholly convinced when I saw it, thinking it felt too much like a studio cash-in. Kind of excited to watch it again and see if that still stands.

What's your opinion on the original, or even that 2000 sequel? Lover, hater? Let me know!

Blair Witch (2016)

Google this film and you'll be met with a smorgasbord of rating aggregate sites, all basically giving it a huge thumbs down. And no, it's not perfect, but I think Blair Witch has been given a rougher deal than it really deserves.

Of course, it was always going to be impossible to match The Blair Witch Project in terms of audience reception and cultural reaction. By no means the first found footage horror film (for that we could go all the way back to Cannibal Holocaust, and arguably further. Plus I'll always mention that The Last Broadcast came out a year before The Blair Witch Project did) it was a movie in the right place at the right time, breaking out into the mainstream and grossing nearly $250 million from a budget of just $60,000. Whatever your opinion of The Blair Witch Project, you have to admit it was a milestone in horror history.

So with that, despite this being another Wingard and Barrett dream team effort (like A Horrible Way To Die, You're Next, The Guest), this sequel is just "good" rather than "great".

The plot is simple: James (James Allen McCune) is the brother of Heather (Heather Donahue) from the original film, and has understandably never got over her mysterious and violent disappearance. After discovering previously unseen footage depicting (he thinks) Heather inside the same creepy AF house from the climax of The Blair Witch Project, he gathers a group of friends and locals to venture into the woods to investigate, so they can figure out once and for all what the hell is going on.

The gearing up sequences are a necessary but annoying start to the tale. Yes, it makes total sense to introduce newer technology, as the events shown here are meant to have taken place in 2014. So as well as the updated camcorder, we have a quadcopter/drone (I still can't decide if it was underused or used just enough) and the biggest cam contrivance: "earpiece cams". Even though they look like a bluetooth headset, these cameras seem to be able to film a full POV from the wearer...? There's also numerous mentions of SD cards and battery life, but ultimately none of that becomes relevant - so why bother mentioning it?

Of course, it makes sense why we have all this techy exposition up front. It's part and parcel of found footage, just like the "oh no, I lost cell service!" moment in modern horrors; we have to have an excuse for all the different camera angles. It's just my least favourite moment in any of these films, because it rarely plays as anything but clunky.

James and Lisa, with his "earpiece cam" visible.

Where the original was an exercise in long form improv, this was fully scripted, and the cast do a good job with what is essentially a lot of shouting and whimpering (there's even a small homage to Heather's to-camera crying moment). Callie Hernandez as Lisa has the most to do, and commits fully and convincingly, especially during an intensely claustrophobic sequence in the third act.

I'm interested to see more of her - and excited to see that she stars in The Endless, a movie I've been looking forward to for a while now.

Something unexpected was how reminiscent I found this to be of The Ritual. The nighttime sounds of the first film having evolved from children's voices and twigs snapping, to the screams of wolves and entire trees being torn down. The sound of something so massive out there in the dark made me think of The Ritual (*spoiler*! -->) and an immense old god lumbering around picking off unfortunate human visitors. I'd like to think maybe the witch has grown so powerful in the 20 years that this is kind of the case?

My one main problem with this movie comes at the very end. By now we all know that it's 'decent horror 101' not to show the monster - or at least not too much of it. However the glimpses we get of the "entity" here are way too lingering. This choice from these horror minds is surprising, and as horrible as the fiend may ever be to look at, some of the fear always drops off once you see it.

Despite this, Blair Witch is a competent handling of the evolution of the story, even if it rarely shows the finesse and imagination that we have come to expect from Wingard and Barrett. It still made me bring my knees up and pull up a blanket, ready to hide behind, and that sense of tension and unknown terror is such an important part of the Blair Witch story. Being lost in the woods at night is scary on a primal level, and these moments, though they mostly entail running, screaming and yelling, are satisfying to experience - even if they aren't anything particularly new.

A Wingard/Barrett 1.5 is still a strong 3 in the grand scheme of things! Speaking as someone who was properly obsessed with the original, this is decent follow-up, certainly making me re-live some of those feelings from '99! On Hulu at time of writing... I'd recommend it with the lights down and something to hide behind.

Creep 2 (2017)

A strong sequel from Brice and Duplass featuring our favourite unpredictable, slightly goofy killer. This was a DELIGHT.

Formally "Josef" but now going by "Aaron" (so he's adopted the name of the victim in the first film), Duplass's anti-hero teams up with a female videographer called Sara (the amazinggg Desiree Akhavan) for another 24 hour video-making project.

Don't be fooled into thinking this is a re-treading of the original concept, because it surpasses it. Aaron tells Sara exactly what he is: that he's killed 39 people to date, that he prefers the term "murderer" to "serial killer". He says since hitting middle age he's feeling like he's losing his edge and passion for the kill. In an effort to document his story and maybe evolve his approach, he wants Sara's help. 

Sara herself is looking for the perfect final episode for a video series she's been producing. Watching back over her previous work, she confesses to her camera how lame it all seems, and really she just wanted to connect with other weirdos. The next day, her interest is piqued by Aaron's ad. Ignoring internal alarm bells during their initial contact, and not wholly believing the one thing the audience actually knows to be true - that he's a serial killer - she continues to stick around, possibly even growing fond of him, and wondering if she's just met the ultimate weirdo.

❝I think I might be deeply untalented...❞

− Sara.

Akhavan is instantly likeable as Sara. Self-deprecating, intelligent and fearless, she's shown as someone who knows this is a fucking stupid idea, but can't help but get pulled deeper into the strange existence of this oddball.

As in Creep, the "horror" really comes from the moments of extreme tension and unease we're made to feel as the story develops. We KNOW that Aaron/Josef is a gold-plated psychopath, and his abilities to charm and disarm are even more powerful in this sequel (confession: I fell for him a little bit watching this. Sorry not sorry?!). He tells a lie as easy as breathing, and everything he says seems genuine and delivered with such conviction, but we know from the first film that anything and everything he's feeding Sara could be false. This is now the second movie we've spent in his company and even we know barely anything about the guy. 

*swoon*... er, I mean "eeek!"

Working off of some solid writing, it's the chemistry between the two leads that really elevates this to something special. These characters really appear to be connecting, and it's super suspenseful watching them interact, wondering what exactly this relationship between them could mean. Will this be a twisted love story? Or just that both are willing to play along for the sake of what they have to gain? ...Or something else entirely?

Creep 2 is sitting at 100% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes and I completely understand why. This is found footage done with such ease that you forget it's found footage. It leads you down a path in the dark, not even asking you to trust it, but you can't help but follow. I urge you to follow!

Streaming on Netflix right now - and there's a third installment in development, according to IMDb! If you enjoyed the first, you must see this. Bonus points for normalising female body hair and full frontal male nudity, too!

The Dark Tapes (2017)

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that low budget horror films can pretty easily scare the bejesus out of you.

There's a certain charm and ingrained creepiness to something that looks like your imaginative mate could have made it, and these lower branches of the horror tree really have the capacity to capture that feeling horror hounds are constantly chasing. 

Yeah, we want to be "scared", but the emotions are more complex than that. Speaking for myself, some of my favourite horror experiences have been less outright "fright" and more deep discomfort, helplessness and hopelessness. 

Without the gloss of Hollywood, you're one step closer to the dirt.

The Dark Tapes adopts the format which in some ways re-energised the genre. Found-footage movies have been around for years of course - as have horror anthologies - but together they created a beautiful little monster of a sub-genre (a sub-sub-genre?).

With V/H/S (and to a lesser extent, The ABC's of Death) viewers had the same feature-length runtime, but inside it were several stories to enjoy, usually with a wrap-around narrative to tie it all together.

And this too, is a series of found-footage, short spooky tales with a bookend narrative. Although the difference here is that all of the stories are from the same twisted mind, that of writer/director Michael McQuown.

First impressions were favourable, as viewing the trailer was enough to tell me that I probably couldn't comfortably watch this film in the house on my own. The POV's of dark domestic hallways alone ruled that out.

Tension is my absolute favourite thing about horror, and I think it's one of, if not the most important weapon in this genre's arsenal. Even those cheap jump scares from the throwaway summer blockbuster horror movies wouldn't work if the audience wasn't nervous in the first place.

When The Dark Tapes lets itself breathe enough to build tension, it does so very well. The tape entitled "The Hunters & The Hunted" involves a couple in a new home experiencing ghostly activity, and the group brought in to investigate.

The Hunters & The Hunted

Of all the tapes this one is the most grounded in reality, and it benefits greatly from that. If the test for a decent horror sequence is whether or not you find yourself trying to escape into the back of the sofa with your hands over your eyes, then this segment passes.


The thing is, there's a blessing and a curse with film shorts. The makers must find that sweet spot of a strong idea, plus a no-frills, tight delivery of it. With little time to waste, the set-up and tear-down of these stories has to be confident and to the point.

The Dark Tapes felt in places - particularly the wrap-around narrative - that this was a draft or two away from that sweet spot. There's a LOT of exposition at the beginning, delivered in a pretty dry way, so it's easy to become lost (and the danger with being lost, is being bored).

The weakest link in the chain here is "Cam Girls". It asks us to take huge leaps with it, narratively, with a pay-off that will make you scrunch up your face in a "wha? is that it?" rather than an "oh shit!".

Cam Girls

Webcam/skype-centred movies are a real double-edged sword, too. It's so gimmicky that unless you fucking nail it, it doesn't work. 

All of the stories came from an interesting idea though, and "Amanda's Revenge" was another I enjoyed, due to the creative use of film and Brittany Underwood as Amanda. 

Amanda's Revenge

Underwood is the best actor in the entire movie, if playing it a tiny bit too earnest and peppy at times, given what she's apparently going through. With a faint smack of the It Follows about it, the "Amanda's Revenge" tape shows the most imagination and flair, with some creepily stunning shots towards its conclusion.

For a budget of $65,000 this film definitely gave it the old college try, and there are some genuinely imaginative and suspenseful moments here... you just have to wait through some scenes of questionable, unnatural dialogue and an overuse of "scary static". But I've done more for less :)

McQuown and this team are worth keeping on your radar though; apparently there's a sequel in the works, so it'll be interesting to see what a second movie from the same stable is like. Hopefully they'll have sanded down some of the rougher edges and polished the points from their debut that shone through, because they're undoubtedly there... they just need a little work.


The Dark Tapes is available on iTunes here, and a tonne of other places if you want to check it out: Google Play, Vudu, iNDemand (Comcast- Xfinity, Time Warner, Cox, Bright House & more), Dish TV, Amazon, Vubiquity (Verizon Fios, Charter, Sudden Link, Media Com &more), Xbox, Playstation, Sling TV & Vimeo.

The Houses October Built (2014)

Have you ever been to a haunted house? Being a non-US native the concept is slightly alien to me, though I think I visited something similar once. I'm not sure my nerves are cut out for such a place, anyway - and it's that fact that made me think this film might be an enjoyable way to spend 90mins.

And for the most part it is... although it's also chock full of faintly cheap scares.

Presented as found footage, we travel with a group of friends in their RV across the states, looking for the scariest and most extreme haunted house they can find.

It's pretty good fodder for a film to be honest. The POV shooting style really lends itself to someting like this, as there's no real disconnect between the viewer and the haunted house experience. It's like we're going through it ourselves. I imagine in the cinema this was definitely one of those films that had people jumping in their seats.

Have you ever wondered, what would happen if a terrible murder (or zombie outbreak, etc) happened on Halloween? How would anyone know those bodies and blood is real?

And it's this idea that The Houses October Built plays with, too. This group is intent on visiting extreme haunted houses; to recapture the fear they had the first time they experienced one. As they visit more and more, they and indeed we, are left to wonder the following:

1. Is some of this creepy backwoods shit they are seeing actually happening?
2. What's the worst thing they are going to see/how far are they willing to go for the ultimate thrill?
3. Are they being followed? Because that creepy clown/bunny/weird doll faced girl looks just the one from 300 miles ago...

The worst (and by that I mean best) thing in the entire film.

The "found" footage is intercut with haunted house workers being interviewed on camera, and these seem so completely genuine I wonder if the crew actually did seek out some real people to talk to. The acting of the friends, too, is very natural. They get drunk, they get irritated by one another... just like you do on a normal group holiday.

Where the movie went off the rails for me, was firstly jumping from footage the friends took, to footage apparently from the gang terrorizing them. Yeeah. Found footage to begin with requires quite the suspension of disbelief; to then ask us to buy into a second source of it in the same narrative, is a bit much.

Secondly, the ending feels like the writers didn't really know what to do, so they just picked something and quickly made it happen, and that was that. There was much build up to the Halloween day itself in this movie, with an onscreen countdown and everything. So the tension to The Day was definitely there. I will concede that this sequence was creepily effective..

The problem was that everything that came after it... not so much.

With creepiness as good as it sometimes gets, plus the cheap-but-potent scares, I would recommend this for a night in with the lights down and a few friends over. Especially this time of year. And if you don't see that doll face mask thing in your nightmares, you are a stronger person than I am!

Trollhunter (2010)

New favourite alert!

I started watching this Norwegian found footage tale more out of duty to my list, than actually being excited to see it. I am an idiot.

Taking the form of a documentary made by a few college kids about Hans, a mysterious hunter, this film handles its rather outlandish subject matter with confidence and humour.

Initially thought to be a bear poacher, it transpires Hans is the trollhunter of the title. He lives a lonely nocturnal life working for the TSS (Troll Security Service) smothering himself in stink and tracking and killing wayward trolls, thus keeping livestock and (unaware) human populations protected. 

Hans has seen some bad shit, and he's done worse. He's tired and sick of the bureaucracy of his job, so he lets the kids tag along for the ride, hoping to spread the word of this unknown threat and maybe have someone else take over the task of hunting.

That all sounds crazy, right? Well it's crazy how good this film is... especially considering that it makes some decisions I ordinarily think are bad ones in horror.

It shows the "monster" early, completely and throughout, for example. But this only serves to put us right there with the crew, jaws dropping and hearts pounding (and mine literally was) with every inconceivable encounter.

And it uses CGI, which shouldn't come as a surprise of course, but the way it's used sits so comfortably next to everything else that you just buy into it. I felt like a fool not being able to watch a CGI troll kill a CGI sheep onscreen... but it's just so bloody believable.

The acting is so natural, full of little moments that read as simple and real, so whether they were written that way or were an actor's choice, it doesn't really matter, both deserve credit.

Another clever touch is the inclusion of aspects already part of the stunning Norwegian landscape, such as electricity pylons; weaved into the narrative as if put there on purpose (as electric fences to deter trolls, obviously).

The use of the "already-existing" applies elsewhere, too.

Trolls have been present in Norse mythology and Scandinavian folklore dating back to 1276(!). In Trollhunter we have the beautiful juxtaposition of the amused disbelief of people who grew up reading fairy stories about these beings, next to Hans and others delivering cold hard facts about them. We learn gestation periods, life spans, why/how UV light harms them and whether the Tusseladd breed of troll is born with three heads or not (they aren't, and technically they aren't heads...). 

It's just a perfect narrative device, bringing these beings to life and making them legitimately scary in a more intellectual way than rewriting the mythology and doing something basic like attempting to give them a scary appearance.

Despite its fantastical subject matter, Trollhunter brings and successfully maintains an escalating sense of things getting worse. It opens with text explaining that this is literally a "found footage" film, so we know ultimately the kids at least go missing, if not worse. With this as a starting point it's just a matter of sitting and watching, wondering exactly how.

The tension is where this film gets you. As the pace gains momentum in perfectly timed increments, the trolls get bigger, the destruction increases and the hunter commenting on something being a "bad sign" gets more frequent.

The last big sequence actually made me flinch and exclaim out loud more than once. I cannot remember the last time a horror film did that! There's also a shot towards the very end that I found breathtaking.

For anyone put off by subtitles: don't be. I'm embarrassed to admit, sometimes I tell myself I'm just not in the mood... but bear in mind that because your focus has to be unrelenting on a film where you must read the dialogue, it really pays off. No glancing at social media, no multi-tasking; you have to pay attention! I had forgotten how much it actually adds to the overall enjoyment and vested interest in the movie.

There's thought and care with this film, right down to the very last word and the final song over the end credits. You should definitely check it out, if you haven't already done so!