FILM REVIEW: #SCREAMERS

by joe x young 

Fantastically Fresh Found Footage Film

In the hit-and-miss world of the ‘found footage film’ there are very few ‘hits’ I would deem noteworthy, this in spite of the success they may have had, such as the ‘Blair Witch Project’ which I would give Kudos to the marketing department for but zero praise for the actual film. #Screamers is another thing entirely.

Right from the start this is ‘found footage’ done right. If you have found some footage it won’t begin with intro titles or any fancy editing, and #Screamers doesn’t, it just jumps straight in with a very routine record of the goings on with an ‘Internet Startup’ company in documentary style as they chat with the founders of ‘Gigaler.com’ (Which is an actual website they created for the film).

The basics of Gigaler is that it uses a proprietary algorithm to target your online habits and target you with exactly the sort of things you would really like to see, unlike the annoying random suggestions we get from the likes of facebook. “The More You Know Gigaler, The More Gigaler Knows You.”  Okay, so nothing really that new in terms of concept, the tech has been around for over a decade, but Gigaler’s algorithm is somewhat ‘next gen’ and far more intuitive, however, it’s not the main focus of #Screamers as part of what Gigaler is about is sharing user-generated video content, obviously looking for those magical instances of footage which has the possibility of going viral.

Whilst filming the ‘documentary footage’ they receive a submission of a ‘screamer’, one of those old school obnoxious clips which starts off innocuous before a ‘Jump Scare’ knocks you off your seat. Tom, the CEO, loves it and thinks it has great potential to generate traffic so they give it pride of place on the home page. It’s a runaway success, soon gathering 27 million views. After a brief discussion it’s decided that they need exclusivity on the clip and so track down the person who created it. This is when things go way beyond expectation as we leave the Silicon-Valleyesque scenario and head off into horror-film territory. As usual I won’t give spoilers as it’s suffice to say that the plot, surrounding a woman who featured in the clip, but who resembles a known ‘missing person’ is precision crafted and delivers the goods in a believably sustainable fashion.

The entire filming process looks to have been incredibly well planned as everything looks super-real, there’s no glossiness, nothing that looks like a studio setup. The lighting and sound et cetera is what I would expect from non-specialist equipment, except toward the end when unfortunately a soundtrack is used, probably to highlight tension, which is actually something this movie didn’t need as it has tension in the bag throughout most of the latter half of the film. The whole production looks effortless, which takes a lot of doing.

Another thing which looks effortless is the acting, as everything seems just like normal people doing what are initially normal things in a normal way. One very normal aspect, and an altogether clever idea, is that the majority of the talent in the film use their real first names, so it’s yet again giving a very natural feel to things. Tom Malloy plays Tom the dynamic CEO, Chris Bannow is Chris the much quieter co-founder and ‘product developer’, Griffin Matthews plays Griffin the cinematographer making the documentary, Abbi Snee plays Abbi the introverted software guru. There are some minor deviations in that Abbi’s friend Emma is played by Emanuela Galliussi and the woman in the screamer clip Tara Rogers is played by Theodora Miranne. All of whom give stellar performances.

For me #Screamers is an absolute diamond, it’s pretty-much flawless and I can’t recommend it enough, not only to fans of found footage flicks but to horror fans in general. It’s the best film I’ve seen so far this year and I can only hope that the makers turn out more films of this quality in the future.
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It had a limited theatre release and is available right now as VOD through Dread Central Presents, the genre label from Epic Pictures.
Go get it.

by Joe X Young 

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