Starring Stacy Chbosky, Ben Messmer, Samantha Robson, Ivar Brogger
Directed by John Erick Dowdle
Found footage simulation in film is becoming more commonplace now, even in horror. Back at least year’s Tribeca Film Festival, this was a seemingly new idea, and a film called The Poughkeepsie Tapes hit the scene hard. Since then, we’ve seen a trailer drop onto the front of major theatrical releases, but no release date in sight with the year now cutting into the third quarter. What could have gone wrong with a film so insanely hyped? Well, the answer is, a lot.
Ripped from chilling, all too familiar headlines comes a story of a man who stalked the people of New York while moving among them, unnoticed, and beyond the reach of police. The notion that at any time, someone could be waiting in your home around a corner has always been a terrifying one. Now, we are allowed a look into the mind of one such evil entity with the recovery of boxes upon boxes of video footage recorded by the killer himself. The execution of this introduction is handled with the weight of a seasoned “Current Affair” voice over specialist, hoping to punch up the drama while hammering home the seriousness of the situation. Experts line up to tell the story of their exposure to the tapes, ad nauseum.
I’m not certain what the filmmakers hope to accomplish having a string of people and reporters insist that this was the most disturbing thing they had ever seen before you, the viewer, are allowed to see it. It’s the equivalent of having police detectives riding the desk during the Jigsaw murders be interviewed about the evidence they processed, and now you have to watch this footage before the actual film. Granted, this is meant to be a sort of documentary style film, more about what is uncovered than what happened as it happened. Still, I can’t help thinking I would have rather watched events in the moment itself rather than receive information second hand from people trying to convince me that any of this was real.
When the experts talking about their involvement with the tapes don’t pull a reaction from me in the form of chills or, at the very least, building dread, I’m forced to look to the meat of the film … the tapes themselves. The meat here has been under the heat lamps at Burger King, awaiting the masses that have come to grips with the fact that the burger on the poster is not what lies in their pretty little carton. That is to say, the build up outweighs the payoff. Sure, if you awoke in a dark room, tied with your hands above your head and gagged and you heard something moving toward you, you’d probably lose your mind, but the level of over-acting and the tone of these scenes doesn’t meet in the middle. The bottom line is, I have to believe what I’m watching to an extent, be pulled in enough to care and then, hope beyond hope, be scared by it. This moment never comes … and continues not to come as we watch the killer play dress up and torture a young woman until she becomes his unquestioning slave.
I also find it hard to speak about cinematography, since most scenes outside the documentary interviews are meant to be from the hand held camera’s POV, so this is the style you are stuck with. It must have been hard to get artistic with little to work with, but the filmmakers do try to bring the horror. That much is obvious. It just falls flat, like a kid in a dollar store mask jumping out from around a corner when you are only half way down the block.
Knowing all this, it is no wonder why this film hasn’t gotten its day on the big screen. I can only imagine a theater full of people who, the week before just saw something like The Incredible Hulk or Hellboy 2, asking how they could have been duped into paying 10 dollars to see a movie that, at the very least, in quality, does not measure up even to other indie releases that get a small art house run. Sometimes, that’s all it comes down to.
2 out of 5
Discuss The Poughkeepsie Tapes in the Dread Central forums!