I watch…a lot of found footage.
You noticed that right?
I mean, it’s not like, a surprise?
It’s not SURPRISE, I AM A WEIRDO AND LOVE FOUND FOOTAGE…LIKE I AM LIVING IN 2000!
I love the stuff.
Unabashedly.
POW.
Saying that, I have seen slight variations on the same stories and themes and can guess the plot and scare beats in a lot of what I see.
Oh, it’s supernatural, this is going to happen and then this and then this.
Or…
Oh, it’s a demon, well that means…
This is all to say that the form is predictable.
Not inherently but because people lack imagination or drive to make something different from the rest. It’s a path of least resistance sort of thing, and you can tell.
Imagine my surprise with THE DARK TAPES, which runs over some very familiar ground but changes things up enough to leave me genuinely surprised at where they went with the stories.
Proving that yeah, there’s still meat on this proverbial bone, if people have some imagination and passion.
THE DARK TAPES is presented as four ‘tapes’ that have been submitted as proof of the existence of the uncanny and unseen. As evidence of something darker lurking among us. The first tape serves as a wraparound, a tale of researchers trying to prove the existence of ‘demons’, or rather transdimensional beings. This tape gives way to the tape of a couple who are dealing with a paranormal entity in the house they are…renting I think. The third tape follows a young woman who has been blacking out and isn’t sure what is happening when she does. The last tape gives us another young woman who, after a sexual assault, begins to experience things she cannot explain and turns to her friends for help. Together, they are the dark tapes, and proof of the danger lurking for us in the shadows.
This is a really fun movie.
It surprises with the changes they make to well-worn tropes.
It takes the medium seriously and sticks with those rules. This is well made, it’s clever, it’s pretty well written, and has some fantastic effects. Like, surprisingly great effects.
The film falters here and there with some things that should be and are never explained. Threads left hanging. And some moments in the writing are ‘meh’, but that gets into nitpicking.
It’s a fun movie.
A creepy movie.
Don’t let the score I give it make you think otherwise.
This is a great riff on the V/H/S formula and is honestly better than some entries in that franchise. I’d actually love to see these folks franchise this and expand the mythology.
Absolutely worth a look and one of the much better second-tier found footage films out there. (I found it on Tubi).
3.75 out of 5
The Dark Tapes
The Spooky World of Chris Ringler 