3 out of 5

Director: Devin McGinn

Found footage.  The end.

I’ve been accused, recently, of having a ‘thing’ for the found footage genre, even though I feel otherwise.  I have watched my fair share of these types o’ flicks, and I would offer that if you compare the ratio of found-footage to Other in my overall viewing oeuvre, you’ll find that the former is madly outweighed by the latter, even isolating it down to the last year or so… but still, I get it.  If there’s a found footage film released, I’ll generally watch it.  Why?  A review I read for ‘Skinwalker Ranch’ proposes a similar query as well as a possible answer: that the style is absolutely riddled with possibility.  Even knowing, now, that all of these are inevitably fake (when acting as documentaries), something about the setup tickles the ‘unknown’ fancy within us, and elevates your average ‘wait for the jump scare’ factor to something where you’re not quite sure what’s going to pop out.  As Ebert noted in his ‘Paranormal Activity’ review, you sit there, scrabbling over static images, hoping to spot something, wanting to spot something, and smart directors or editors can properly stitch this into a narrative and a 90 minute runtime to milk us for some edge-of-your-seat time.  Alas, there really hasn’t been a great example of the genre.  ‘Blair Witch’ was new, and ‘Paranormal’ seemed to come out of nowhere, but both of these have their failings, where they let the curtain drop or shift the story just enough that it distills the magic.  And let’s not ignore that it’s certainly possibly to create these same elements in a non ‘found footage’ film.  Those style flicks are, again, rare, but I think what sets them apart is that traditional films make us expect a story, where ‘Skinwalker’ and its ilk can get by with just a suggestion of What’s Going On…

What’s Going On in this movie?  A man’s son disappears in a flash of light, captured on home video.  He lives on Skinwalker Ranch, also known as Sherman Ranch, which has been a hotbed of reported UFO activity in the good ol’ real world, though you don’t need to know this (I didn’t) for the film to work.  Some time later, MDE (I think that’s the abbreviation) sends in a team of investigators to check out the going-ons.  MDE is a government agency, or something something, and already there’s an interesting emotional component here that most POV flicks forget to include – the father (Jon Gries) is happy for the validation of his claims of something taking his son and the MDE-ers are certainly happy to have a new project, but there’s a disconnect where this interest is misinterpreted as a bid to ‘rescue’ the child… a confusion that weaves through the team members, as well, and justifies our inevitable split later in the flick when some people want to go and some want to stay.  Most of these films are content just to be ‘documenting’ or whatever; it was nice to try to blend in some actual reasoning.

The same approach is applied to the crew.  There’s a team leader, a security expert, a veterinarian (who’s studied cattle mutilations), a journalist, a cameraman, and a team ‘bitch’ whose down with the conspiracy theories and does the dirty work.  There are no unnecessary romantic subplots, and we’re not force-fed obnoxious backstories – just a few minutes with each in front of the camera as an introduction.  But I actually believed in each character’s defined role because they demonstrate competence in their realm.  The cameraman, especially, manages to keep a steady eye on things and it doesn’t seem like a gag because… he’s been hired.  He’s not just along for the ride – it’s his job to film, so he does a good job of it.  We generally can understand where we are and what’s happening – in part because the location is well chosen and we stick to recognized locales, not suddenly ‘discovering’ that extra room that becomes the kill room – but mostly because we’ve ditched the fuckin’ shaky cam when shit goes down.  He runs, sure, but he puts eyes on the bad guy when needed.  The technique to ‘blur’ what’s in frame is digital fracturing of the footage – implying that whatever’s in frame is interfering with the equipment.  And I’m fine with that.

So it’s little things that make a big difference.  I like that when something strange is shown to us, the crew knows to investigate it.  I like that when it gets crazy, most are agreed on leaving.  And I like how much stuff they showed us!  Yes, it’s a total hodge podge of visual creepos, but it’s all referencing the ‘real’ reports of stuff at Sherman Ranch, which is pretty neat, so you can apply your own story to what was going on or why.

Anyhoo.  Some things still are a bit stiff, of course.  The reason the father keeps them around once realizing that they’re there to document and not help is a little… unexplored… and some of the decisions – hardened research team or not – are a little questionable.  Yes, you want footage now, but… maybe wait ’til morning?  Or at least say the requisite “I don’t think this is a good idea.”  There’s also a bit of story padding relating to the history of MDE and the Ranch, and while it’s interesting and results in some fun extra bits, it’s definitely shoe-horned onto the story.  I think it was necessary for giving us some grounding, I’m just wondering if it could’ve been worked into it a bit better.  …Aaand despite my praise, I’ll say it: It’s not scary.  They do the whole spooky “we found these videos” thing at the start, but these are clearly actors and there’s clearly some stylish credits at the end, but that’s not really the reason.  I dunno, we’re a hard bunch to frighten.  But I don’t hold it against ‘Skinwalker,’ because compositionally, this was a solid film.  And I felt like it actually used the genre appropriately.  And it was fun.  Like ‘Trollhunters,’ there’s nothing particularly special about it except that it was interesting the whole way through.  That’s actually special enough for a movie, but definitely noteworthy in the world of found-footage.