Life of Belle

As a parent, this film took me to a place that was unimaginably uncomfortable beyond all comprehension. The film itself had an incredibly good production value feel to it for something that was made with no budget. The kids were the real star of the show, the acting was amazing and my goodness was the mother incredibly freaky. Never again will I talk to a camera while on my bed!! I would easily put this film up there with exists and as above so below. I genuinely look forward to what this producer has next in the pipeline.....you 100% have a fan here. My partner although not a fan of ff films, quite comprehensibly said this film was amazing, your onto a winner here.

I don't write reviews often, but I was impressed with how disturbing this movie was. It filled me with angst-that lump in the back of your throat feeling. Syrenne Robinson plays the main character, Belle who pulled at my heart strings, with her love for her brother and her entire family. I later looked her up on IMDB to find that this is her first movie (along with most of the cast)..again, impressive. The movie explores mental health issues and the reality of what some kids and families deal with on a daily basis. The found footage is mostly from the perspective of the young girl, Belle and how children try to cope in difficult situations.

After a horrific disappearance, the release of footage from the affected family designed to help find out what happened to the missing daughter shows their typical family life which soon grows darker and more ominous forcing them to figure out what's going on to save themselves.

This was a fairly solid and intriguing found-footage effort. Among the brighter aspects to be had with this one is the great build-up that provides the kind of intriguing setup for how this one plays out. The first half here, spending as much time as it does detailing the family strife and their interactions with each other that does show them to be a fairly normal loving family that does have a dark secret hiding amongst them due to the glances and cryptic conversations that are shown to take place on the fringes of their relationship just barely captured by the camera. Since so much of the focus comes on her and her antics that are usually featured alongside her brother, the fact that the these subtle hints are dropped nicely alongside the footage taken from the security cameras that tries to suggest something else happening to the family, this one does a fairly solid job portraying the build-up of the family. As this one goes along and it starts to spell out the truth about the situation in a series of increasingly more ominous sequences, there's a dramatically more chilling tone and atmosphere that hangs over the film as the kids gradually find the behavior and outbursts to be far more concerning as they notice her increasingly crazed behavior. From ranting and raving in the middle of the night to bizarre crying fits in the oddest places around the house to seemingly harmless children's games that turn into psychologically terrifying experiences that highlight something not right in the whole ordeal, there's quite a chilling finale here that sets everything up quite nicely. This does take a while to get going as there's a rather low-key nature of what's going on takes the more reserved nature of the storyline into the main focus which keeps things at a measured but potentially sluggish tempo for some that might not be thrilled with the lack of action or overt explanations for what's going on.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Language, children-in-jeopardy, and Violence.

I've seen many horror films over the years and many found footage horror films. This one, without revealing too much, gave me literal chills at the end and made me scream somewhere in the middle. Low budget or not, this film captured every terrifying feeling of not knowing who exactly you're living with on that particular day. And especially captured the fright of pure innocence not understanding what is happening with the adults in the room. The acting is not Oscar worthy but I don't think that's what the family who made this movie were going for. Something as simple as a little girl wanting to create her own YouTube channel can accidentally hone in on the destruction of the entire family dynamic.

Some of the best DIY Filmmaking using Found Footage I've seen in a long while. The use of the single setting and actual family was clever. The kids acting was VERY good. The little girl can handle a camera better than some pros I've worked with. The story was actually scary. Some of the blink and you miss it effects were quite good.

This is a perfect example of the up and coming DIY Filmmaking genre that I love to see. Some guy has a camera and knows a talented family and they write a story and film it and bang you've got a movie. Technology allows the average guy to make a film and get it out there to the people with out the fricken studios getting in the way.

Well done!