The Reel Review
A social media influencer in a small town in Texas uncovers a mysterious, unsettling camcorder recording of him as a child that leads him and his adult sister on a quest to uncover a sinister force that appears to be controlling the town’s residents. William Magnuson, Kelsey Pribilski and John Gholson star in this found footage/mockumentary, horror/mystery.
Man Finds Tape swings for the fences with a heady story that pushes past the more typical found footage/mockumentary genre elements. Its first big moment features a horrifying black and white CCTV video where residents go catatonic as a man in the middle of Main Street is struck and killed by a minivan. The film’s execution, however, is where this low budget effort suffers. The uneven, overly edited story is gappy and frequently fails to make sense, despite a handful of spooky, Lovecraftian moments. The acting throughout is mediocre at best.
The film is only an hour and 24 minutes, but feels way longer, due to the meandering story from writer/directors Paul Gandersman and Peter S. Hall in their feature film debut. With so many incomplete ideas and a confusing A/V mosaic that includes self-shot footage, home videos, CCTV footage and Facetime calls, Man Finds Tape finds itself feeling more gimmicky and cluttered than clever.
REEL FACTS
• Man Finds Tape was produced by filmmakers Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead (Synchronic, The Endless).
• Lovecraftian horror, established by American author H.P. Lovecraft, focuses on such themes as fear of the unknown, cults, and alien monsters amidst a surreal breakdown of reality, and is focused more on psychological dread than jump scares.
• Although set in the fictional town of Larkin, Texas, Man Finds Tape was filmed in and around Austin .
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