Fraud

As the patriarch of the actual family depicted in Dean Fleischer-Camp's subterranean séance, I sincerely hope everyone out of sheer curiosity gives FRAUD a good "look-see" to experience the cinematic magic...

A couple (and their young child) live a life beyond their means, putting them in a desperate spot. What will they do and what is the aftermath?

"Fraud" is one of those films that makes me uncomfortable. Not because the material in the film is controversial, but because I tend to respect the old saying about only speaking nicely or keeping your mouth shut. And, unfortunately, this just does not give me much to work with if I want to be strictly nice.

One might say it is clever, innovative, or at the very least "experimental" that the film is shot on a home video recorder, and most scenes are really only a few seconds long. So the plot unravels through partial vignettes, leaving the viewer plenty of room to make their own assumptions about the characters. This might be seen as a clever device, perhaps, but it's a hard sell.

Any movie made with a home video recorder is hard to watch. Only on rare occasions to "found footage" and similar styles really work. This one works if we ignore the fact that the dad seems to be always filming… always… no matter how big or small an event is. And he continues to film while questionable activity is going on, making him either really stupid or unbelievably addicted to his camera.

Simply put, there is not much to see here. It has no humor, it has no scary bits. There is a modicum of suspense, maybe. If this were an actual documentary, it may have some sort of value in that regard, but it is quite obviously not a real documentary and hopefully does not pretend to be. Allegedly the director had to tell an audience that the family in the film had not committed any real crimes… but what gullible audience would have believed they did?

Right now, the film is making the festival rounds, and can be seen March 25 at the Boston Underground Film Festival (BUFF). This is not the must-see film of the festival, and it seems unlikely that a distributor will jump at the chance to buy it up. (And, frankly, with all the music clips in the background, it may not even be able to be released legally.)

Delightfully disturbing and unnervingly intriguing, Dean Fleischer-Camp's FRAUD is constructed from a family's real home movies that are stitched together into a completely fictional narrative. Finding the "seams" that comprise this patchwork of videos is part of the cinematic fun and quite the challenging puzzle to solve.

FRAUD is a timely and relevant film if one takes a moment to consider all the current commotion over "fake news", politics and American consumerism run amok.

Dean Fleischer-Camp's direction and Jonathon Rippon's impressive editing create quite an artistic feat of pure magic.

After watching the movie, I did a bit of research to find the family's actual YouTube channel AND it sure doesn't disappoint in the sheer number of home movies and adventures they have posted online.

If one is even remotely curious to see how different fact is from fiction, then a quick finger's waltz atop the keyboard will let you explore the REAL family who inspired the movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF0pr_wuOvA

It is apparent Dean Fleischer-Camp never imagined in his wildest dreams what his tiny, innocuous art film would connect him to for all eternity.

The father in the film Gary Arnold is on a mission.

He has an expanding digital footprint from his ongoing paranormal investigations.

Yes - he's an avid "ghost hunter", BUT quite unlike most in this genre - Gary's amassed hard data & enlisted some serious scientific sponsors to catapult his outrageous evidence directly into the consciousness of the American Heartland.

There's also a sensational aspect to his experience that will likely ignite the public's imagination: Gary's winning some righteous cash using EVP messages collected from the ether...

All compliments of beings who claim to be: "Alien" & "Otherworldly" !!!!!!

With his network of prestigious & credentialed specialists and a Nobel prize nominee - Gary's poised to soon make a historic real life Disclosure of epic proportions that will reverberate globally:

WE ARE Definitely NOT ALONE in the Universe !!!!

Gary is confident he has the ironclad, incontrovertible forensic data to convincingly show it to all he world.

Undoubtedly, one cannot over-estimate how this simple self-evident confirmation will cause a cascade of hemispheric changes in the intrinsic nature of our perception as to the true order of things in the Cosmos.

So - Buckle Up / Fasten your seat beats...

2025's about to get one helluva lot more CRAZY !!!!!!!