4 out of 5

Directed by: Scott Schirmer

When horror movies make most disturbing lists, and aren’t necessarily accompanied by A24-style praise, they get the ol’ quizzical stare. The A24ers get the same, but “disturbing” tends to mean something different to that crowd; elsewise you’re likely stepping into riskier territory that’s often equating shock value for depth, hence seeing a clear divide between defenders of that depth, and others just seeing it as edgelord stuff. While my holy judgements probably lean towards most of those flicks being the latter – call a spade a spade, and excess gore ain’t subversion just because you make it a tribute to grindhouse or something – there are definite surprises in the mix, which is why the risk can be worth it.

I very much expected Found to not be as effective – as powerful – as it is. It somewhat bungles its ending, finally submitting to some of the black humor indulgence it had previously successfully played as subversion, but I sense the root of that is the written source material – it comes across as a “punchline” that would work well in written form but feels a bit too jokey for all the preceding on film. And yes, if you’re expecting Oscar caliber acting (whatever that is), this is an amateur production, focused around kids, and that will feel a little stiff. …However, those kids should all also take a bow: director / writer Scott Schirmer elicited very real feeling performances in terms of dialogue, and cadence, and how the kids interpret and portrayed their lines. The actual line reads may have a slight cuecard vibe, but man, I felt all the discomfort and confusion (or confused forthrightness) of child- / teenhood throughout, and that is the case like 1% of the time with capital A kid Actors.

What also helps to counter edgy-for-edgy’s sake vibes with Found is how it confronts its edginess immediately: when 12-year old Marty (Gavin Brown), narrating to us, tells us about how he has found a severed head in his brother Steve’s (Ethan Philbeck) closet. Yes, we’re shown the head, and it’s definitely a grisly prop, but the film treats this ungloriously; blandly; Marty remarks on how this head once lived, once kissed someone, etc., but in a flat and earnest way that a kid might – it’s not overly poetic or reaching for meaning, it’s fitting this violent act into the world as he currently understands it.

So: Found is, more rightly, a coming-of-age movie. The traumatic event – often a part of such films – is Marty discovering that his brother is a serial killer. In the same way that this genre tends to examine the impact of our family on the way we grow up, that holds true here as well, with Steve once a loving brother and now distant, but still showing care at select moments; with an attentive-when-she’s-around mother (Phyllis Munro); and a man’s-man double-standard father, who beats Steve to, y’know, teach him a lesson about not being mean or something. Meaning we’re also getting a layer of what led Steve to his actions as well, which allows for some really emotionally brutal crossroads, such as when Marty thinks he understands his brother’s motivations, but then gets a pretty stunning comeuppance in that regard.

Besides the obviously touchy material, a big focal point for the film is the movie-within-a-movie: Headless. Marty, likely through the influence of his brother, is a huge horror movie fan (with some deep cut horror posters littered around their house), and stumbles across this tape. He watches it with a friend, and the scenes blend with reality, and depict all of the really vile stuff that Found otherwise mostly keeps off screen: we get the violence-as-titillation; the pointless gore. And even here, where Schirmer could have gone super camp or XXXtreme shock, while it is shocking, it’s played up very specifically to elicit an effect upon Marty.

The movie is shot with a 70s / 80s style wandering camera, bouncing across the schoolyard or fields through which Marty wanders; an observing eye. Leya Taylor’s VHS-like cinematography captures a kind of pre-cellphone childhood perfectly, without feeling like the retro exercises we’d start to get later into the decade, and Mike Anderson (of Racebannon!!) delivers a perfect score that straddles the film’s moods perfectly, remaining “innocent” but with enough minor key undertones to allow for tension as needed.

As mentioned, whether due to sticking too closely to Todd Rigney’s book, or maybe just trying too hard to treat the material as realistically – emotionally – as possible, the movie backs itself into a corner for the ending. Again, I can really see it working – and I’m truly referring to like the last minute or so – on the page, but it’s a little off for the film. And even building up to this, the movie kind of drags its feet a little bit, perhaps reluctant to give itself over to the horror of its conclusion. Regardless, thematically it still clicks, and the preceding 90 minutes is such a compellingly punishing journey that, even with this wishy-washy end, the move on the whole is still quite fantastic.