Tag: foundfootage

Film Review: The Outwaters

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I’m usually NOT a fan of found footage horror movies, but I was curious to check this one out when I discovered that it was made on a $15,000 budget and needed to see how writer-director Robbie Banfitch managed to pull this off. Also, the movie takes place in the Mojave Desert, which quite frankly, as much as I find it a very alluring place, it can also emote creepiness as so many people go missing there every year. In fact, it was the premise of one of my short stories, Comets Tear the Skies.

The simple plot is that a group of friends go to the desert to record a music video, and it doesn’t take long before things get really crazy and deadly. For the majority of the film, the viewer is as disorientated and terrified as Robbie wanders the desert in both total darkness and glaring sunlight. What we do see is a gory bloodfest and strange, tremors-like worms crawling around (are they aliens?). We’re never sure what exactly is going on, but what we do know is that our protagonist is in danger, and there’s no escaping the violent onslaught.

This is a strange, bloody cosmic horror in which there’s no moment of levity or respite for any of the people involved. In fact, the horror only continues to progress to the bloody finale that will finally show us what happened to Robbie’s friends, and ultimately what happens to him. Check this out if you love found footage, as this movie really does wonders with its limited budget and the writer/director’s experience, but still manages to create a very chilling movie.

*Thank you so much to Emma Griffiths & Cinedigm for an early screening of the movie.

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Film Review: Host

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I’m not a fan of the found-footage sub-genre in horror. In fact, I didn’t like The Blair Witch Project or Paranormal Activity (two films famous for being ground breaking for the sub-genre). So I wasn’t sure if I was going to enjoy Host, since it’s a found footage movie directed solely via zoom during the COVID-19 pandemic quarantine. I’ll have to admit that Rob Savage managed to create a very suspenseful and scary movie with the limited resources he had available.





The whole premise of the movie is that a group of friends decide to engage in a séance guided by a medium through zoom. But this being a horror movie, things obviously go wrong. The first fifteen minutes you’re wondering if anything is going to happen and when, but soon strange things begin to happen and the chill-factor rises exponentially.










This film was best made to be viewed using your phone or tablet (although I used my notebook), it won’t have the same claustrophobic chilling effect on a large screen TV. I really enjoyed Host, and at only 56 minutes it doesn’t overstay its welcome by trying to hit the 90-minute mark, which is something many horrors should do instead of trying to fill the last 30-minutes with filler.





Host managed to make me reconsider the found-footage subgenre, and I am curious what Rob Savage will come up next now that he has scored a three-movie deal with Blumhouse. The scariest is yet to come.










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