P.O.V. (2015)
Matt Boiselle
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Starring Tom Clear, Karl Kennedy-Williams, Lewis Saunderson
Directed by Richard Anthony Dunford
Some of the more entertaining (and a few wretched) independent horror films have been spawned over the past few years by being produced out of very little funding, but to make a movie with the absolute minimal budget possible? I’m a born skeptic, and needless to say I was chomping at the bit to check this one out, so here we go.
P.O.V, the film in question from Director Richard Anthony Dunford was supposedly shot on a 9,000 British Pound ceiling, and you’d think that with such a paltry financial backbone, that the production would suffer terribly, leaving the viewer unimpressed, but I must say that Dunford has given an admirable effort some room to breathe, and delivers a decent presentation. Zack (Clear) is down in the dumps after getting the boot from his girlfriend, and his brother is there to pick up the pieces and get him out to a party to lift up his spirits with a few friends in tow. Here’s the interesting hook about this film, while you’d assume that this is “found-footage” style, nothing could be further from the truth – the entire movie is seen through Zack’s eyes, taking the audience on a headlong view into his field of vision – an interesting format, and while it’s certainly not the first time we’ve seen something like this, there are moments where it works very well.
The night begins with the small contingent heading out to a former retirement home that Zack’s brother has been fixing up for a little soiree with some mixed company – booze, ladies, and conversation…LOTS of it. The hook here is that this little party isn’t going to go down with out some hardcore trouble at hand, and when the story comes to light about the previous owner’s claims of demons overtaking the property, causing him to set fire to it in order to perform a cleansing, you’ve simply got to realize that the biggest problem here won’t be skunked-out beer and stale chips. I’ll put in the cease and desist order on any more details other than this: turns out the owner’s claims were in fact true, and the demons are in party-mode, leaving Zack to lead the audience by the throat on a first-person forced march throughout the entire complex. Closed doors, stairways and long hallways are traversed by the panicked lead-man in an all-out track-meet to save himself from certain slaughter, and while some of these jaunts can be a little nausea-inducing, they’re all in good fun, and show that Dunford has the mind to keep the viewers’ eyes stuck to the screen.
Downsides: for a short feature, there is a lot of monotonous dialogue, and the makeup work on the possessed partygoers is very pedestrian in appearance, however with such a cellular allotment to film a display such as this, you do with what you’re supplied with, and overall P.O.V. is mindless fun, and while you shouldn’t expect too much from this movie, it does have a nice return – worth a watch.
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Film
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