Rating: D
Dir: Amanda K. Morales
Star: Amanda K. Morales
The next time anyone asks me why I hate found footage films, I’m just going to make them watch this. The best thing about it is, it’s barely an hour long, including credits. Had it been feature length, I might have been jumping from a window to escape. It’s supposedly a “fan edit” of leaked evidential footage, covering the experience of American author Leona Chantraine (Morales). She came to Edinburgh on a research trip for a novel she was doing about a 17th-century witch, Katie Wallace. Though she doesn’t believe in any of that paranormal stuff. Inexplicable stuff begins to happen around her apartment, and at the same time, there’s someone with a video camera surreptitiously following and filming Leona, both outside and inside the building.
Do not expect anything, until the final five minutes, where the two threads collide. To that point, it’s staggeringly dull. SEE! Leona typing! WATCH! Leona listening to a podcast! CHECK YOUR PHONE! As Leona drinks a cup of coffee (top)! There’s not even any logic to the footage. Why do we have surveillance cameras in every room of the apartment? Well, not the bathroom. More’s the pity, because footage of Leona taking a shower, could have brightened up proceedings considerably. Similarly, there’s POV footage apparently taken from under her bed. Her stalker isn’t shown entering the flat until later. It’s as if this was made up as they went along, a theory which would fit with the near-complete lack of information about the witch.
The spooky happenings are feeble, such as cutlery being re-arranged, I kid you not, and doors being closed. Then, abruptly, the spirit of Katie suddenly gains the ability to write coherent messages. Why didn’t it do that to begin with? There’s historical gaffes too. Yes, King James VI took a keen interest in witches. But he became James I of England, not Scotland as Leona says. To steal a comment from Letterboxd, it all “gives the impression that she had a holiday in Edinburgh and decided to see if she could turn it into a movie.” It’s something of a pity, because with the right process of escalation, and a script with considerably more rigour, there is some potential in both idea and location.
I mean, Scotland has no shortage of dark history. In my hometown, for instance, witches were rolled down a hill in barrels with spikes driven through them. These were then burned where they stopped rolling. We have a monument. So I’d watch a movie about a sceptical visitor, blundering into things outside their realm, and getting a hard reality check. Hell, that’s basically the plot of The Wicker Man. But it’s going to need a hell of a lot more than drawers shutting themselves, for that to work. Though I just realized Morales was one of the stars of Dagger Kiss: Enchanted Forest. All of a sudden, what we have here begins to make a great deal of sense. Definitely needs more lesbian canoodling.