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.

Hounds of Love (2016)

Content warning: Abduction, abuse, rape.

Hounds of Love is the debut feature from Australian writer/director Ben Young and another I'd heard whispers about from the festival circuit. It's been floating around on the edges of my radar ever since. There's a special kind of thrill when a movie you've had your eye on for a long while appears on a streaming service.

Anyway.

Supposedly based on several different true crime stories (I thought it echoed Fred and Rose West quite a lot) it most closely resembles the real-life experiences of Kate Moir, and her abduction and abuse by David and Catherine Birnie in Perth, Western Australia.

Like the Birnies, Evelyn and John White (Emma Booth and Stephen Curry) have a disturbing, mutually fucked up and co-dependent hobby of kidnapping, raping and murdering young girls. 

Their latest victim and the one whose story we see unfold in full is Vicki (Ashleigh Cummings), who almost immediately spots the weaknesses in the White's relationship. John, a rapist and probable paedophile with a violent temper, needs Evelyn's help to abduct and deal with the girls; Evelyn, seemingly a victim of abuse from an early age herself, is damaged and manipulated to the point of believing these horrifying deeds count as acts of love. There's an awful lot of awful stuff going on behind the closed doors of this house.

Maybe it's my true crime obsession showing, or that my resistance to bleakness is pretty high, but I didn't find this as soul-crushing as others seemed to (want bleak Australian realism/nihilism? May I suggest The Snowtown Murders. Note "suggest" and not "recommend"). 

Hounds of Love is some of the worst of what humans are capable of, shown convincingly and without exploitation (at least in tone, as Kate Moir has gone on record as saying she was upset at the startling similarities). All three leads are incredibly strong, with a special mention for Cummings, who manages to convey so much when most of the time she's bound and gagged.

Young's vision for this is pretty spectacular, given it was shot in 20 days and was his first feature. He knows what to linger on: the stillness, hopelessness, the surrounding suburban normality; and what is going to be more upsetting to imply than outright show: the detritus left after a rape, the killing of a dog ☹. The cinematography (hat tip to Michael McDermott) is beautiful, dare I say it. It's as stunning as the subject matter is stomach-churning, looking almost fashion editorial/music video perfect in some moments.

It's not without a problematic cloud around it, but if you don't mind that and feeling like your heart is in your throat for 90mins, it's streaming on Hulu now.

Baskin (2015)

Bathed in beautiful blues and reds, with an often pounding heartbeat of a soundtrack, Baskin is a nightmarish 1hr37min. You may well breathe a sigh of relief once it's done.

Directed by Can Evrenol as his first feature, this is the long-form version of his short film of the same name, describing the same events. Here's the Netflix blurb:

"A group of tough Turkish lawmen answer a call from a remote town and stumble into a gory Black Mass that appears to be occurring literally in Hell."

The intensity of that is well-deserved. As they venture further down into the darkness of the sub-levels of an abandoned building, these cops discover rooms of abhorrent acts, torture, mutilation, and satanic rituals.

Time for these men skips and loops, too, so along with some mind-bending and batshit encounters, we're forced to question too what is real, or what is happening when.

Initially with only their torchlight to guide them, we see slices of horrors before being able to take in the full tableau. Catching glimpses of incredibly fucked up shit is arguably worse, because your brain fills in the gaps.

Oh that's what she's doing!

And then comes the point where you're able to see everything that's happening, and you wish for the darkness and ignorance again.


Some horror films become more than simply "horrific"; those that use their imagery in such a way that it becomes a deeper level of offensive or taboo-breaking. Not just the subject matter, but the way it's presented. I found Baskin to be such a film. I'm not in the least bit religious, but there were things in this that disturbed me more than normal horror fare. The vibe of this film is evil. Its intensity and the blood-drenched, religious forward-motion of the characters reminded me of Martyrs (a film I like, but have never been able to watch more than once).

It's an understatement to say that Baskin is not for the squeamish, or the easily shocked. It's beautiful to look at, but what you are looking at is... well, deeply fucked up, a lot of the time! This is a serial killer's fever dream.

Streaming on Netflix at time of writing...

Let Us Prey (2014)

There are few things I like more than a nice satanic film on a Sunday night, especially one where the fallen angel in question is an actor I like (and er, fancy) and especially when it ends exactly the way I wanted it to 👏

Let Us Prey has been on my Netflix peripheral vision for a while - mainly for the striking cover art of a hanged little girl.

Starring Liam Cunningham and Pollyanna McIntosh (she's currently the cool leader of that new group in The Walking Dead) this is one of those films I immediately got a strong sense of "YES" about, due to the opening sequence of crashing dark waves, crows and desolate suburbia all to the beat of a nice thick electro score.

This is more end than opening credits, but it's also a gem of a tune. Slow, drowsy, and dark:

The plot takes place over three hours, from around 9pm to midnight, and largely in one location: a small police station in Scotland. PC Rachel Heggie (McIntosh) has her first shift tonight, and it's going to take her places she has tried her whole life to forget.

Rachel is a survivor and fairly obviously the final girl - though not all that sympathetic a character, for the most part. She's hard and tough because she's had to be.

Also all of her new coworkers are twats.

Bonus points also, for this:

Several scenes were rewritten at McIntosh's behest. She saw her character as strong and did not want Heggie to be viewed as a victim or in a sexualised way. The filmmakers were also careful not depict Heggie's background of abuse exploitatively. (from Wiki)

To be honest, no one is particularly likeable in this film, apart from maybe "6" (Cunningham), carrying himself with that sinister ease and who, shortly after he's brought into the building, begins to expose everyone's sins via telepathy and grim flashback. Death and impressive gore flows steadily, once it's introduced, with demises ranging from the absurd to the marvelous... until only the new girl remains.

And man, is there a high concentration of crazy in this place! Douglas Russell is immediately repulsive as a self-hating homosexual/psychotically christian Dahmer-like chap, keeping severed heads in his 'fridge and oh, one more thing: he's the police sergeant. 

Are you all right sir? ...Sir?!

With a climax that initially feels too bombastic for such a low-key film, it soon comes into focus why. To have "6" and Rachel standing toe-to-toe on the front steps as the building burns behind them is such a great image, especially knowing at this point who he is.

He doesn't just want to save Rachel, he wants to make her his partner in vengeance and the soul collection of those condemned to Hell. He is offering her a life punishing those who deserve it, with him by her side.

*dreamy sigh*

Call me a heathen, but I found this so romantic and beautiful ❤ She's a final girl who survives the horror film, but chooses to turn her back on the light.

With a basic concept we've heard a million times before - the old "underestimated newcomer slowly infects the minds and souls of a group of people" - this film could have easily been something unremarkable. But the atmosphere, gore and that twisted kind of romance at the end elevate it to something that really stuck in my mind.

Not a bad way to spend a couple of hours on a Sunday night.

(I'll be in my bunk).