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WNUF Halloween Special, 2013
Reporter Frank (Paul Fahrenkopf) spends a Halloween night doing a live broadcast from a supposedly haunted house where a notorious murder took place years before. Accompanied by married mediums Louis (Brian St. August) and Claire (Helenmary Ball) and priest Joseph (Robert Long III), Frank persists in his broadcast despite an increasingly ominous and disturbing series of events.
A fantastic retro look and solid scares make for a memorable piece of found footage horror.
I think that this film is a great example of living and dying by a dedication to authenticity. A perpetual problem with found footage movies is getting past the contrivance that someone would continue to film after, say, watching someone get eviscerated. In this case, the film maintains a pretty solid sheen of believability via a slow-burn escalation of events in the house.
I liked the everyday feeling of Louis and Claire---along with their familiar, a cat named Shadow---as they explore the house. Likewise, even the throwaway moments with other characters capture the slight weirdness of adults on Halloween.
Overall, I bought the arc of Frank’s character. At first, he’s a man trying to milk any spookiness and interest out of an old house and an eccentric couple. Then as things do get weird, there’s the thrill of having something exceptional on his hands, and thus his reluctance to pull the plug even past the point of danger.
I can imagine that some people would be split on the overall structure of the film. Part of its authenticity is the fact that watching evening TV on Halloween (if you were one of those kids without cable) was kind of a slog. The news broadcast is stuffed full of ads, many of them nasty campaign back-and-forths due to an upcoming election. I actually liked this. As one of those people that gets hung up on the realism piece of found footage, I found myself much more immersed in the story because it was so well framed. At times the film itself seems to wobble on this strategy, as an unseen hand will fast-forward certain sections of the tape.
As for the look of the movie, I thought it looked very much like a VHS tape. There’s a sort of slick-retro look I’ve seen over the last 10 or so years in horror, and I find it very distracting. It looks more like a filter over modern footage, while this film does look like it was made in the 80s.
While I can’t say that I see myself revisiting this one all that often, I enjoyed the ride. It builds to a memorable finale.
WNUF Halloween Special, 2013
Reporter Frank (Paul Fahrenkopf) spends a Halloween night doing a live broadcast from a supposedly haunted house where a notorious murder took place years before. Accompanied by married mediums Louis (Brian St. August) and Claire (Helenmary Ball) and priest Joseph (Robert Long III), Frank persists in his broadcast despite an increasingly ominous and disturbing series of events.
A fantastic retro look and solid scares make for a memorable piece of found footage horror.
I think that this film is a great example of living and dying by a dedication to authenticity. A perpetual problem with found footage movies is getting past the contrivance that someone would continue to film after, say, watching someone get eviscerated. In this case, the film maintains a pretty solid sheen of believability via a slow-burn escalation of events in the house.
I liked the everyday feeling of Louis and Claire---along with their familiar, a cat named Shadow---as they explore the house. Likewise, even the throwaway moments with other characters capture the slight weirdness of adults on Halloween.
Overall, I bought the arc of Frank’s character. At first, he’s a man trying to milk any spookiness and interest out of an old house and an eccentric couple. Then as things do get weird, there’s the thrill of having something exceptional on his hands, and thus his reluctance to pull the plug even past the point of danger.
I can imagine that some people would be split on the overall structure of the film. Part of its authenticity is the fact that watching evening TV on Halloween (if you were one of those kids without cable) was kind of a slog. The news broadcast is stuffed full of ads, many of them nasty campaign back-and-forths due to an upcoming election. I actually liked this. As one of those people that gets hung up on the realism piece of found footage, I found myself much more immersed in the story because it was so well framed. At times the film itself seems to wobble on this strategy, as an unseen hand will fast-forward certain sections of the tape.
As for the look of the movie, I thought it looked very much like a VHS tape. There’s a sort of slick-retro look I’ve seen over the last 10 or so years in horror, and I find it very distracting. It looks more like a filter over modern footage, while this film does look like it was made in the 80s.
While I can’t say that I see myself revisiting this one all that often, I enjoyed the ride. It builds to a memorable finale.