Frantic Trailer for New Found Footage Horror ‘Don’t Look in the Dark’
I love an independent dark horse horror movie making the festival rounds, and Sam Freeman‘s found footage Don’t Look in the Dark is catching my eye.
In it, a couple’s phones secretly recorded their camping trip in Pinelands National Reserve on April 4, 2022, capturing fragmented audio/video of what happened. The blackouts remain as found in the footage. It calls to mind other found footage classics, most recently The Outwaters.
For those on the East Coast, the film will be making its premiere at the New Jersey Film Festival on January 31 after winning “Best Feature” at the Birmingham Horror Film Festival last year.
Don’t Look in the Dark was made with one goal: to create a theatrical experience like no other, Freeman explains in a provided statement.
“This is not just a film. It is an event. The darkness is not filler; it is the canvas. Half the movie unfolds in pitch black, but hidden within that blackness, depending on your screen, your projector, your lighting, and your eyes, are fleeting, haunting images and moments that can completely shift the meaning of what you have seen.
“Every audience sees something different. Every theater reveals something new. No two viewings feel exactly the same. It is meant to unsettle you, confuse you, draw you in, and then leave you wondering if you missed something, because maybe you did.
“We wanted to do for a new generation what The Blair Witch Project and Skinamarink did for theirs: redefine what horror can feel like, how it is experienced, and how it lingers long after the screen goes dark. Especially for a generation raised on iPhones and vertical video, we embraced that constraint as part of the storytelling. We framed the terror through a visual language they instinctively understand, while also turning its narrow limitations into something unsettling and strange.
“This is our attempt to redefine what a found footage film can be, and what watching a horror movie in the dark can truly feel like.”
Trailer…
Long synopsis:
“Golan and Maya travel to the Pinelands National Reserve for a quiet camping trip meant to honor Maya’s late father and prepare for the birth of their child. Without their knowledge, their phones begin recording on their own, capturing broken and intermittent audio and video as night falls. When Maya becomes convinced she sees a young child lurking near an overturned tree, her maternal instincts pull the couple deeper into the woods, where perception fractures and escape becomes uncertain. As darkness consumes both the environment and the footage itself, the film forces the audience to question what is being seen, what is being hidden, and whether watching is part of the danger.”
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