The Andy Baker Tape

I chose 'The Andy Baker Tape' for my 2022 Halloween film. I hadn't watched a found footage film in a while and this one seemed to be getting some decent buzz. It was okay, but sadly nothing special.

The film is a lot more polished than most found footage films. The actors are better looking and the acting is of a higher standard than you would typically expect. Usually you'd think this would be a good thing, but something that can often sell the found footage concept is the raw and unpolished quality of it.

The ending is always key to found footage films. Why has this footage been found and what ultimately happened to these people? The ending to this one was a bit of a let down. It just wasn't creative enough.

The film is short at only 70 minutes, so even if you are not loving it it is easy to persist. 6/10.

"The Andy Baker Tape" (2021) is a movie very similar to Creep (2014): you have the main character, who holds the camera, on his way to meet someone he doesn't really know, only to find out this person might be more than what they appear.

The acting is good enough. The main character plays the food reviewer type really well, I enjoyed his way of explaining food textures and whatnot. Same with the secondary character: on the surface, he totally felt like a person I could meet in real life.

The writing is where the movie has a few struggles. The script does a good job in making us care for the caracters within the limited duration of the movie (70 minutes). Now, it only does that because it kinda "cheats" with its found footage concept: you know those movies where the main character has the camera on while more important stuff is going on (stuff that would make any normal person forget about filming)? This is one of those movies. There's a lot of exposition going on while the camera is filming everything, and in some of those moments you ask yourself: "why is this guy filming it? Oh yeah, because it's a movie and the script needs to let me know what's going on" - and there goes the suspension of disbelief, so important to the found footage genre.

These shortcomings won't make "The Andy Baker Tape" (2021) a bad movie. It's an okay flick. You will definitely feel entertained, if you look past some things. If you've watched the amazingly well done "Creep" (2014) before this, the shortcomings will stick out a bit more, but even so, the characters make this one worthwhile. I've seen worse movies with longer durations, so 70 minutes is not a lot to spend even if you don't like this one.

Not much happening here, not much new.

Jeff reviews restaurants on his YouTube channel, has an offer coming from the Food Network, and video records everything he does. He somehow ends up in a DNA database that says he has a half brother, Andy, that Jeff never knew about. Jeff meets Andy, who at first seems like a harmless weirdo but who becomes more dangerous the longer they hang around together.

Much of the story seems like filler--they hang around together so they go places and do stuff that make no difference to the story's outcome. They spend surprisingly little time critiquing restaurants' food. The ending is rather predictable and inevitable-you know what's going to happen, the question is how. This is a reasonable first effort by two new filmmakers, but it's ultimately pretty routine.

To be honest, i am a big fan of FOUND FOOTAGE movies, therefore i might not be the most objective reviewer. In any case, TABT is an average FF movie at worst. I have watched many worse movies of this genre. This is good.

I liked it a lot. It tries to be different. Story is kinda original and these two actors did a good job. They were convincing, for sure viewer empathize with these characters.

Unpredictability is rare in this genre. Viewer always knows what the ending would be. I wish for this to change, i mean, it's dumb to keep writing the same ending. Whereas TABT doesn't do something different, still there are some nice twists and turns. 70 minutes running time helps a lot for this to be interesting and not boring. Good pacing, nice escalation. Still, many things should change about FF movies. The same patterns over and over are getting tiresome.

In conclusion, TABT is a good psychological drama thriller movie.

So glad I decided to watch this. I've probably seen 99% of every ff movie out there & every now n then I find one that I'm extremely grateful for & this was one of those. Keep up the great work fella's.