Not a sub-genre of horror I want to be watching all the time, but I do confess to a fondness for a found footage film every now and again, especially when they happen to be good. The Alison-Eve Hammersley directed and co-written found footage Erie (in her feature length directorial debut) has a lot going for it. The footage looked authentic and the central two leads were not at all bad. The only wrinkle in this was a late film decision that almost derailed the whole thing.
Beginning in a familiar way, you are treated to white text on a black background explaining that there had been a mysterious rise in suicides in the area of Pennsylvania, and that the following footage was recovered from two camcorder tapes that were found on one of these suicide victims. It is the 90s and siblings Stella (Carly Stewart) and Oscar (Grant Carter - EverythingNowShow) have returned to their hometown to investigate the out of nowhere suicide of their sister, Iris (Aimee Paxton) a year previously. Unhappy with the police investigation into the death, Stella has taken it upon herself to do her own investigation, hoping to both gets answers for her sister's death, while at the same time making a documentary that she hopes will assist with her aspirations of becoming a journalist. Her ace in the hole is that unknown to the police, she has the last moments of Iris caught on camera (something the film opens on), and that has given her clues she otherwise might not have known about. Her search leads the two first to the home of an odd man named Red (Markiplier lookalike Ryan W. Garcia - Helldivers II voicework), and then to the woods where Iris took her life.
The two tapes making up the found footage is presented as if unedited and in a cohesive forward path. It is presented in a old style square format, with a grainy look that felt authentically nineties, and all characters and locations also look of the time, giving a nostalgic feel. To add to the illusion, there are snippets of footage that the pair have recorded over, such as childhood moments of the two, which creepily appear at key moments, as if the tape was encountering errors. Stella is mostly front and centre with Oscar filming her and the footage is shown as raw, multiple takes of Stella talking to the camera, and her brother's humorous teasing of her (such as purposely shooting her out of focus or shooting with objects obscuring her view) added a spark between the two. Classic brother and sister things that I could easily identify with. Stewart was great in her role, and while Carter had a more melodramatic and occasionally cheesy performance at times, was still also decent. Garcia was fantastic in his supporting role as Red, coming across as both amusingly as well as uncomfortably weird, with it feeling possible there might be more to him than meets the eye. The small cast helped things feel more real and insular, and the effective look footage really added a lot to the atmosphere.
Then there is an odd third act decision. With no fanfare, Erie suddenly stops being a found footage horror and transitions to a traditionally shot horror for its final 25 minutes, all pretence of being real footage abandoned with a more familiar widescreen look, and characters being filmed a out of film cameraman. This abrupt change took me by surprise, and it was a good ten minutes before I had gotten over this and was able to get back into the story being told. It felt a shame as it had been working out well as a found footage. I understand why this decision was made, with an actual explanation for everything being disclosed somewhere that wouldn't be seen on the in-film found tapes, but I found (footage) myself thinking about how these details could have naturally fitted into the core film style. After I had recovered from this change in direction, I did get back into the story, and came to like this final part. Even if large amounts of it were a character slowly hobbling through dark woodland. The explanation did feel a little silly at first, but I came to appreciate it and it did make for some genuinely unsettling moments, and the red herrings were appreciated.
The choice to blend found footage with normally created footage just about worked, though personally I would have preferred things had stuck to just the one format. Nonetheless, this was a good horror that had some horror filled moments. Erie had its world premiere at Beyond Fest on October 1st.
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