1 out of 5

Directed by: Nathan Ambrosioni

As the initial found footage tropes during Therapy started to pile up – questionable decisions, forced ‘let’s keep filming’ reason – I began to wonder if the creator of this 2016 entry (that year being very much after the found footage boom) had actually watched very many entries from the genre.  Because the movie didn’t feel like an outright cash-in, and the construction is very DIY without necessarily being exploitative – there are possibly two actual effects gags in it, with the rest just smeared blood and sound effects – but the story and construction felt much more like a loosely connected set of spooky images and ideas with accompanying music stings than something that would actually play at a theater.

And then you read that writer / director Nathan Ambrosioni was 16 at the time, and, well, maybe he hasn’t watched very many entries from the genre, and almost certainly hasn’t had the few extra years needed ingest more films’ worth of lessons.  That’s a roundabout way of complimenting the construction of Therapy, but it’s very much with that inexperience in mind: this is a really well made student film, but it doesn’t pass muster beyond that.

Its sparkling idea to structure the flick as half found footage, half cops reviewing said footage and then coply discussing how to find the axe-wielding murderer witnessed thereupon, is certainly a smart way to justify the flick-within-a-flick’s existence, but that’s still not a far stretch from a “what you are about to see is real footage…” title card that other examples have used, and isn’t much taken advantage of, as both of Therapy’s settings fall flat after one or two rounds of cutting back between each.  On the horror front, we can’t much side with the wonderfully brilliant decision to explore an abandoned house in the woods from which you’ve heard screaming because “it’ll be a laugh,” and on the cop front, there’s very little logical investigating and police work going on – the lingo we hear and procedure we see are very likely drawn solely from seeing other similar things on TV.  An exhaustive list of “why?” questions will pile up as the movie exhaustingly extends its non-premise to 90 minutes.

Thats its value as a film, which is to say: nil.  Top down, this is madly professional for a young director / writer, and an impressive wielding of a non-budget for something that ends up at least looking like a polished film.  While any seasoned horror viewer will be able to sense the lack of money due to the way that scenes are staged (or avoided), I still admire the use of a great location and a lot of blood smears to effect the genre.