Monday, October 3, 2011

2011 October Horror Movie Challenge Movie 9: The Poughkeepsie Tapes



This is supposed to be a collection of videos recorded by a serial killer showing him stalking, torturing, and killing his victims. Interspersed throughout are interviews with police and other experts on the case. Um...for one of the "found footage" type horror movies that are supposed to be recordings of real events, it looks real since the camera angles and sound and picture quality are horrible, but the movie itself is ok. I personally enjoyed the "Head Case" films more than this one. Little things about this movie really irritate me and make me not like it as much as I wanted to.

One small example...when the mother of the little girl who gets kidnapped from her yard calls 911, the dispatcher tells her that the police can't investigate the disappearance until it's been 24 hours. Even a casual viewer of a few episodes of Law & Order should know better than that. If the missing person is a child, the police investigate right away, you dolts. Little things like this take me out of the movie (and I don't think it's a small quibble, really, asking the filmmakers to have a slight idea what the hell they're talking about before they make a movie...not to much to ask, really). And honestly, if I wanted to sit around and watch shaky footage that looks like it was filmed by a five year old, I'd lend my camera to a five year old and then watch that. It would probably be more interesting than this movie. Seriously, we watch the tapes of the torture, and then we get to listen to an interview with an "expert" who describes to us what we JUST FUCKING WATCHED TEN SECONDS AGO. And another time, we get to watch people sitting in a room watching the killer's film footage. wow, riveting, we're watching people watching TV. How meta.

It's not all bad. The killer's footage is sometimes creepy, and his voice can be chilling, and I feel bad making snide comments about these filmmakers who were obviously trying to make a good, solid indie movie here. Seriously though, people, there are other movies that do the same thing this movie tries to do, and they do it better. Watch those movies instead.

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