The Poughkeepsie Tapes

 

If I say “The Blair Witch Project”, half of you will say “God, that boring mess just gave me motion sickness and wasn’t scary at all.” while the other half will say “Awesome flick. Very realistic and tense, with a superbly unsettling ending.” I’m of the latter opinion that the film was great and really understood that the imagination of the audience is much scarier than anything you could show them on the screen. Nevermind all the meta-marketing that went on. It was just a bold idea that paid off (I think).

While there have since been clones and imitators to the “is it real?” style used by Blair Witch, I haven’t seen anything that looks like it would skeeve me out to the same degree that the film “The Poughkeepsie Tapes” would. I’m not a fan at all of the realistic human suffering and gore that’s all rage with today’s torture porn that passes for horror cinema like the Saw or Hostel films so I don’t know if I could watch this, but “The Poughkeepsie Tapes” is a mockumentary based on the idea that investigators track a serial killer to his house and discover over 800 video tapes wherein he’s documented stalking, capturing, torturing and killing his prey. The film is split between interviews and footage from the seized tapes, including some of the killer’s most gruesome moments. It appears to have the standard screaming, helpless women that are required for any good horror film, but based on the unsettling clip below, it may appear to have a bit more substance.

Thankfully, the film makers aren’t trying to pass the film off as any document of real activity, but the film is getting good buzz on the indie film circuit and recently performed fairly well at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Trailer

Creepy Clip

~ by willtuck on December 9, 2007.