63 minutes of a movie. I love short horror movies! “Is it good? Is it bad?” Who cares! It’s minimal investment! If a movie seems dodgy to me I’ll avoid it if it’s over 2 hours long (because let’s just be honest with ourselves, Mister Director… you’re not making “Citizen Kane” just another piece of shit about a haunted doll or a zombie outbreak or a crazy killer man).
“Found Footage.” The name says it all. Australian police find some home videos of torturemurder and hooray! We get to watch! It even has a disclaimer at the beginning, that this footage was gained from a secret private party, and you’ve been warned that it could be terrifying. Oh neat! A disclaimer! As in “Hey I’ll bet you this is real snuff here, wanna bet? We’re going to present it like it is and let YOU be the judge!”
Oh man, such a tired trope. Corny and overdone. It’s the basis of nearly every “found footage” movie – the “Hey this might be real ghosts or snuff or monsters or something!” approach. Still, 63-minute movie, let’s throw caution to the wind and DO this thing! It might be awesome!
It begins with footage of the killer buying the camera from the salesman, so it comes with an origin story built right in! “Oh and look, it has night vision” says to me “There’s gonna be a lot of night vision scenes in this effer. A bit of “this is the killer trying out stuff on his new camera” business, shooting some random stuff, then we’re going to lay out some background story stuff so you can feel attached to the characters or something? All seems perfectly normal, a trip to the beach (because “Australia” – they all just beach-it constantly, there is an annually-required amount of swimming involved, and the government issues every family one surfboard that they are required to maintain and keep displayed and ready to go. I’ve never been to Australia), his date lady naps and so he “Gews fer a sweem, mate” and then it’s “Fuck the date lady, let’s go kill stuff!” Sixty-three minute movie, let’s plod right into the torturemurder, time’s a-wasting!
…okay so it’s not THAT quick to the kill, but we get the overall flavor pretty quickly. He seems charming but has major creeper issues. Sets up another date with another girl, and we’ve got 45 minutes left in the movie at this point so let’s horror it up! Even this early in the movie it’s got a little something going on. I’ve seen a number of these home-made DIY “found footage” movies, and they’re usually cookie-cutter (and frequently they’re just abject “ho’wutt fackin’ gah’bidge” as my Bostonian people would say), but I’m intrigued by this one. Killerman has a method, he goes back to his crime lair and we see some of his personality and some of his issues. The bar is set pretty low for these movies, it doesn’t take much to stand out from the others.
…but we’ve got 45 minutes left, go kill that neighbor. I’ll help, he’s a puke and I hate him. Let’s go kill that puke! Or a rando in the park, that’ll work too… but let’s put a pin in keeping that neighbor as a future project. He just sucks a lot.
First thing I’d suggest, if you watch this not-completely-terrible-at-all DIY gem (Australian horror, btw, has a lot of gems the past 10 years or so) is that you do so with subtitles turned on. Not because of the accents, thank you, but because the sound engineering is pretty non-engineered. Native microphone stuff from whatever cell phone they recorded this movie with, so any time there is atmospheric sound, like traffic noises or background music from shitty neighbors, the dialog is all muddy and you can’t understand a shit. Not. A. Shit.
The second thing I’d suggest… well I have nothing to suggest about the movie. It’s not really long and complex enough to get more than one “thing I’d suggest” but that in mind, the second thing I would suggest is the salted maple vanilla ice cream at Trader Joe’s. Man that stuff is GOOD! Also, the French vanilla, also from Trader Joe’s, with a drizzling of “Midnight Moo” chocolate syrup (same, Trader Joe’s… that’s where I do my shopping) on top, or maybe some… OH!! The maple bourbon creme liqueur that Boyden Valley sells, drizzle some of THAT over the French Vanilla! It’s a Vermonty thing but they do mail order, and if you’re going to the trouble to mail order something from Boyden Valley you might as well also get their Maple Bourbon, and a bottle of their Barn Yard Red. So what am I up to, seven I think? Seven “things I’d suggest” seems a reasonable number. Two about this movie I went to the trouble of watching and reviewing and five more about alcohol and ice cream.