A teenager escapes an alien invasion. More developed sequel to Hungerford, this time riffing on 28 Days Later and Heart of Darkness as much as Heinlein’s The Puppetmasters. Still some rough edges, but an improvement over the first instalment.
Category: Found Footage
A Christmas Horror Story (2015, dir. Grant Harvey, Steven Hoban & Brett Sullivan)
Four linked horror stories take place on the same Christmas Eve. Reasonable anthology held together by William Shatner’s drunk radio jock. Plenty of contemporary horror tropes dealt with: changelings, zombies, Krampus, spooky dormitory found-footage.
Bite (2015, dir. Chad Archibald)
After a young woman on vacation gets bitten by a waterborne bug, she develops odd symptoms. Modest and small-scale body-horror flick with plenty of underdeveloped plot threads, but some icky moments and an interesting central performance.
Out of the Shadows [AKA The Devil’s Toy Box] (2017, dir. Allen Kellogg)
![Out of the Shadows [AKA The Devil’s Toy Box] (2017, dir. Allen Kellogg)](https://255review.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/1705311015326_l.jpg?w=300)
A documentary team investigate a supposedly-haunted asylum, the site of a reality show gone wrong five years before. Straightforward jumpscare found-footage horror sequel (to Seven Nights of Darkness), effective for an hour before collapsing in on itself, storywise.
Phoenix Forgotten (2017, dir. Justin Barber)
Decent found footage mockumentary. Crazy lights over Phoenix, Arizona, in 1997 lead to the disappearance of three teens. 20 years later, the sister of one of them investigates what happened. Quite well done, with more character than you usually see in these.
The Atticus Institute (2015, dir. Chris Sparling)
A documentary account of 1970s ESP tests revealing a case of demonic possession. Well-handled for the first two acts, though loses its way in the third. Well-acted throughout, though, and provides a few good jumps and arresting images.
Blair Witch (2016, dir. Adam Wingard)
20 years on, a young man and friends make a documentary about the events of The Blair Witch Project. Contrivances are needed to get the movie going, but the rest of the film is effective-enough found-footage jumpscare material in this sequel/reboot.
