I finally got around to watching found footage horror Life of Belle at the weekend after a series of missteps from me. First, I forgot I even had the screener and didn't even write it on my to-do list, then when I did go to watch it a few weeks back I inadvertently tried watching a different film completely, and then last Friday I happened to complete the video game Vampire Survivors and so decided to review that instead.
Life of Belle opens with some body-cam footage from a police officer (Victor Mele) investigating screams coming from a house late one night. He discovers the bodies of three family members, a father (Matthew Robinson), mother (Sarah Mae Robinson - Parting Song), and a small child (Zachary Robinson) in the home, but there was no sign of the fourth family member, young Belle (Syrenne Robinson). With the girl seemingly vanished without a trace, the local police have edited together camera footage found in the house to show the lead-up to the deaths of the family, with it hoped that the released footage might create some more leads as to what happened to Belle.
The film proper shows roughly a week in the life of the family, with the father away on a business trip, it is up to the mother to take care of the children. It soon becomes apparent that she has mental health issues and as the week goes on these symptoms begin to get worse and worse...
I'm assuming this was a bit of a family effort and that it was no coincidence that the protagonists of the film all share the same surname as writer and director Shawn Robinson (in his directorial debut). It would explain why the child actors felt so real and authentic if they were essentially being themselves on camera for the most part. Aside from the actress who played the mother, the rest of the family have Life of Belle as their sole credit which made this even more impressive. The found footage aspect works on some levels but not so well on others. Belle gets gifted a video camera from her parents so that she can film herself for a hoped for YouTube channel about her life that she has coined 'Life of Belle'. That makes sense for why she is constantly filming. Less normal feeling is that the entire house is kitted out with CCTV in each room. It makes sense that the children's bedrooms and playroom might have these cameras, less so when they are all over the house. With the father aware of his wife's mental illness there is a suggestion he has put up the cameras more to check up on her when he isn't around.
Usually with found footage horror the horror will come in the form of the supernatural. I admit to spending most of the seventy two minutes of this constantly expecting something unnatural to appear on camera, such as objects moving around on their own, or ghostly forms spotted. Instead, it becomes clear that the horror here comes from the mother's deteriorating mental state, with it seeming that she suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. With the children so young and helpless you begin to really feel for them, trapped in a house where their mother is convinced that some unseen force is out to get them. As the days pass her behaviour becomes more and more alarming to the children, and they eventually come to be afraid of her wild actions. The viewpoint of the movie coming from small Belle led to comparisons with the technically impressive Skinamarink, while the setting gave Paranormal Activity vibes. Taking place over a number of days, much of the footage has Belle and her brother Link playing together in a natural and innocent way. These more mundane moments of normality heightened the moments when things get more scary for them. The children were the stars of this, with the father character missing from much of the movie, and the mother character turning into almost an antagonist with her crazy behaviour.
I was kept engaged with this due to really wanting to know how events would get so bad that three of the characters would end up dead, and even more importantly, how on earth Belle would manage to go missing when she is the protagonist who is filming most of everything. When that moment does come it went slightly as expected, but I wasn't sure if the way it was shown was the best, I had a slight underwhelming feel to that key point even if it did send a chill briefly down my spine. While there is a slow burn feel to the ramping up of the horror I think the length for this was perfect, it could have become dull if this had been stretched out any longer. My final mention goes again to the child actors who were surprisingly fantastic. Life of Belle came to the streaming service SCREAMBOX on May 17th.
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