Found Footage Review: “FEY”

TL;DR: Recommended

There is a fine line in movies of how long they should be. You want the film to be just as long as it needs to be, sure, that’s easy, but finding that right balance is the tough part. You need to cut it down until it hurts, losing scenes and moments you may love but that don’t serve the greater story. Then you have to rein in that cruelty with craft, so you can add a little art to the story, so it’s not just A to B to C. You want there to be a clear path, or at least a path, but you also want there to be some beauty to it, even if that beauty is ugly. Too many films go on far too long, the filmmakers are in love with the acting, or writing, or just the whole thing, and the point of it all gets lost in the weeds. Then there are movies, like FEY, that just needed a little more time to really hammer home the point they’re trying to make.

It’s a close thing.

It’s an art.

And if you get it wrong, you can ruin the whole film.

Thankfully, in this case, they didn’t.

FEY follows a young woman who has survived a traumatic ordeal as she enters the last phase of her recovery treatment. As part of her treatment, the woman needs to film herself and be recorded to prove that she has healed from her experience. The film is presented as footage she filmed, as well as footage from the woman assigned to her case. What begins as a simple document of a young woman’s final act of healing takes on a strange angle as we see her start trying to find answers to questions about why she was attacked and her own history. We soon learn that the woman may have ties to a fertility cult and that she may still be in their crosshairs. As the mystery deepens, we see that whatever darkness the young woman had survived is nothing compared to what is still to come for her.

Were this not such a well-made, interesting movie, I wouldn’t recommend it. As the movie ends, there are still too many unanswered questions hanging in the air, and it’s hard not to feel frustrated. It feels, though, that this wasn’t the act of filmmakers who didn’t know what they were doing, but ones who were simply holding their cards too close to the vest.

This is well plotted, well acted, and is shot very well. They also do a good job of mixing in footage with onscreen text, which deepens the mystery.

And it’s the mystery that keeps you really invested, as it’s really interesting. Not completely original, but interesting, and that’s what makes the ending so frustrating.

The film is a slow-burn without a deeper story to tell, but it’s still creepy. The way it’s shot leaves the darkness a mystery, at times to the movie’s detriment. Even so, it’s a fun movie that really needed a little time to tell the whole story. At just under an hour, it feels like there’s too much meat on the bone.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt38514387/

3.25 out of 5