INFRARED – found footage review

There is clearly a trend in found footage to comment on the tastemakers and influencers that fill so much of our social media feeds. These are the folks who are trying to create their brand by bullying their way forward into the public gaze. It’s an interesting evolution of the form, similar to what we’ve seen before, as it seems that at its dark heart found footage films are about voyeurism and that you are getting the intentional creation of footage to be ogled is fascinating and timely. Throw a stone and you’ll find someone out to make a name for themselves by either doing dances or singing or otherwise wiggling for our attention. 

Welcome to INFRARED. 

Infrared is the name of a burgeoning online paranormal show that a man is willing into success. With a crew following him he takes cases of hauntings and investigates them and then ‘releases’ the spirits trapped there. He means well but is dancing close to being unethical in the way he focuses on his show more than the wellbeing of the people. The crew filming him decides to track down his sister, who is a psychic medium, to find out why she and her brother, while doing the same thing essentially, don’t work together. The crew plays on the sister’s love for her brother and convinces her to join them on a shoot with her brother, something he isn’t very keen on. The group is headed to an empty school that was the abandoned after several people died within it tragically. The trouble is that ghosts may not be the only thing haunting this particular building. 

This is an up and down film. It’s at times grating but then shifts and works. The lead character is hard to get a fix on, and that’s not bad. They are pushing too hard, and are too obsessed with fame but they also aren’t trying to sell out their sister or crew. It’s well made, it sticks with the format, and once things get to the school it really picks up and there’s some great ideas. The problem is, as with most of these films, that things fall apart. There’s a chaos element to the film that really changes your perspective of what’s happening but it doesn’t match up with other parts of the story they are trying to tell and in the end we’re left with a frustrating finale that ties nothing up and leaves no last feeling but frustration. I give them credit for good acting, an interesting premise, and some great moments, but it just doesn’t come together at the end and with nowhere to go they turn to the obvious when there were much better directions to head. 

Not bad at all but not necessarily worth the time to watch it but hey, you do you. 

2 out of 5.