Since I watch so many found footage films I figured I’d go offroad a little for the next two reviews. I decided to see what YouTube had to offer. I am looking for feature films as there are far too many short form found footage pieces on there to try to go through. I adore short films but, seriously, I wouldn’t try to review them because they’re so short it seems silly. At least for my purposes. I prefer to focus on features and report back so if folks want to check them out they can. Shorts you can sorta seek out if they are on a service like YouTube and just dive in and see what you find.
Pow.
CASSETTE, for being on YouTube, is actually much better made than a lot of the found footage films I have found on streaming services. While I can’t say it didn’t leave a deep impact with me, I still have to give them credit for putting together a well made product that has a point.
CASSETTE is clearly inspired the V/H/S series, so much so that they even show clips from several of the movies in one of the segments as if they are perhaps real things filmed by someone. It’s…a choice. The film’s wraparound finds two friends getting together to watch some videocassettes one of them has, filming things as they unwind. The host excuses himself as his friend settles in to watch the random tapes. He is given a camcorder to record his reactions as he watches the films and he chooses one at random to watch. Cut to the first segement. The short pieces that make up CASSETTE play out as we see footage of people filming themselves and their lives and invariably something horrifying happens. The search for a killer on the loose, a strange housemate, a man dealing with the possible side-effects of a drug he is taking, a mysterious series of videotapes that inspire terrifying action. These are some of the entries in the film, the shorts all presented as found footage and generally sticking to the ‘rules’ as such. As the film plays out the question becomes, why does the host have these tapes and what do they mean?
As I said, it’s a well-made film. While you can tell it’s low budget it doesn’t FEEL that way. The actors are pretty good. The film, while mostly handheld, is well filmed with very little ‘shaky cam’. The only music is really incidental. The biggest knock on the way it’s put together is that the segment about the possible drug hallucinations all happen on camera, which, maybe it’s meant to make you think it’s all real but it definitely changes how the story is portrayed.
While I didn’t enjoy the film’s stories, I can’t say the film was poorly made. It’s low budget, and that shows here and there, but a lot of it is overcome with how they made the shorts. There are things they could have done a little more effectively but it all ‘works’. I wish the stories were stronger because that’s the biggest knock here – they just aren’t compelling. There are moments of suspense, and there’s a lot of promise here, but it just doesn’t jell. For fans of the subgenre, who are looking for something new and different it’s worth a look, While I didn’t like it, it’s not ‘bad’ at all and I admire what they achieved here.
2 out of 5
The Spooky World of Chris Ringler 