A common problem with found footage and horror mockumentaries is the generally limited scope of their influences. Yes, sometimes it’s a product of keeping budgets low, but there’s often a sense that filmmakers think the genre begins and ends with “The Blair Witch Project” and “Paranormal Activity.” One of the best things about Peter Hall & Paul Gandersman’s “Man Finds Tape” is how it incorporates other horror voices into the mix, including body horror that feels inspired by David Cronenberg and even a few scenes that reminded me of the Lovecraftian forces at play in John Carpenter’s “Prince of Darkness”. It doesn’t all have to be shaky cams and forced POV. Hall and Gandersman reveal the limitations of so many “Blair Witch” pretenders through their ambition and unpredictability. There’s very little scarier than staring at a grainy image until it finally dawns on you what’s so terrifying about it.
This sense of cursed, controversial imagery is foregrounded in a prologue that includes the most infamous footage of Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, shots that set the world’s imagination on fire but were later debunked. Lynn Page (Kelsey Pribilski) introduces her documentary film within a film by discussing how we interpret imagery, even when we don’t fully understand what we’re seeing. The manipulation of imagery, especially in the world of viral horror personalities that have become famous online, becomes the focus of the first act of “Man Finds Tape,” but this is not quite the movie you think it is at first (that movie is “Shelby Oaks,” for the record.)
Lynn’s documentary is about her brother Lucas, a famous YouTuber with the handle “Man Finds Tape.” Why is he called that? Well, he found a tape. And it’s the kind of discovery that would change your life forever. On the grainy recording, he sees footage of himself as a child, woken in the middle of the night by a shadowy figure, fed something, then laid back down to sleep. The idea of finding recorded footage of something dark happening to you as a child is terrifying enough, but the mysteries surrounding the clip start to drive Lucas mad. Who was the figure? What did he do to young Lucas? Why was it recorded? And why does Lucas now seem to go catatonic now and then?
Lynn becomes involved when Lucas sends her footage that appears to be from a surveillance camera at a business on a street in their small town. The camera faces the street as a man slowly walks into it. Everyone on the street seems to go catatonic like Lucas as a van runs the man over. It’s a slow-motion murder, and it’s a terrifying image, a grainy shot of brutal death as people seem to stand there and do nothing. It’s one of many images in “Man Finds Tape” that’s legitimately chilling, one that makes you say “WTF” and are scared to learn the answer.
As Lucas and Lynn dig deeper into just what is going on in their small town of Larkin, Texas, they discover connections to a religious figure with ties to their family and the community. Without spoiling, things get pretty Lovecraftian, and the arrival of a mysterious stranger with a connection to what’s going on only adds to the unpredictability. What the hell is going on in Larkin? What did they do to Lucas, the townspeople, and what’s the greater plan? And will this weird man in black be able to stop what feels like a pending apocalypse?
If you’re saying that this doesn’t sound like a found footage or mockumentary synopsis, that’s part of what makes “Man Finds Tape” so effective. It’s not just another ghost story; it’s a story of malevolence that happens to be told through home recordings, YouTube clips, and CCTV footage. Hall and Gandersman play a little fast and loose with their genre—as so many of these movies do—but it’s forgivable given the pace they maintain in their blissfully short film (under 90 minutes with credits). Another problem with so many movies like “Man Finds Tape” is that they run out of ideas before the third act even starts. That is not the case here.
Hall and Gandersman deserve all the credit, of course, but it doesn’t feel inconsequential that the incredible Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead produced this project. It has the unsettling unpredictability of their masterful “The Endless” or the twisted energy of “Something in the Dirt,” noted as an influence by the directors in their statement in the notes for this film. They also cite Sarah Polley’s “Stories We Tell.” Yeah, this one’s different.
