As much as I love found-footage films, half of the fun for me is in discovering the movies that are hiding in plain sight. Discovering films that haven’t been embraced or heralded like many other films are. It doesn’t happen often, but once in a while you find something that reminds you how interesting the subgenre is.
While I have my issues with how the film brings things together – LORD, someone teach a class on how to end a found-footage movie, PLEASE! – it’s a very well done, and creepy movie. What begins low-key, ramps up to a very scary affair.
The film follows a young woman as she tries to get to the bottom of what may have made her grandmother commit horrible acts before her death. What the woman finds is that her family has ties to a local legend about a woman who haunts the local library. The woman films her investigation into her grandmother, into her past, and into this local legend, which may have more meat to it than she could ever have imagined.
The film has an interesting style, in that it moves from mediums, and setpieces quite a bit. The movie has a small cast, and its core set is a beautiful library which, if you can film there, then YOU DO! The movie relies on low-key chills for much of the film, and that is when it is at its strongest. Shadows, sounds, and an undercurrent of dread. It’s when the film gets more overt in its horror, and broadens its scope that it starts to stumble.
The acting is good, the mixed medias are good, but as it gets more overt in its horror, it doesn’t feel as strong. Then there is a moment in the film where it goes from – I found a YouTuber who does spooky stuff, and did one on something I have – to – Let’s meet up. HOW? How does he know how to find you, where to find you, and was he close? You can look past it, but it definitely took me out of the film. As did some of the ramp-up at the end. It felt stronger when it didn’t become about cursed objects and demons, but here we are.
It’s a fun movie, saying all that. And I liked it. It has its issues, but it’s really interesting; it just needed to trust itself and allow the film to be a low-key dread-fest. There is a very cool mystery here, and an amazing core set, but some of the pacing gets weird, the climax feels like it’s too much, and some of the traditional scares feel like they push too far into things we have seen before.
BUT, BUT, BUT, it’s scary, it’s well done, it’s got a cool vibe, and it’s well worth checking out on Tubi (as of this writing). If you’re a fan of these movies, there is a LOT to love.
3.5 out of 5
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt23784934
