Fraud

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.)

Dean Fleischer-Camp's film Fraud is quite unlike anything else I've witnessed this year.

52 minutes of whiplash editing married to a completely fictional narrative makes Fraud one helluva crazy ride!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The actual Family's YouTube archive contains a GARGANTUAN stash of home movies covering just about every aspect of modern day American life. Every day it appears they are on trip to a new restaurant, the mall, a beach, a ski trip or hike.

Given the vast volume of the Family's video collection, I imagine several sequels are pending.

For those of you who can't just get enough "Reality TV" and want something more to hold you over -

Here is a portal into the Family's genuine adventures:

One can "binge watch" their YouTube channel for literally weeks and come away with a greater appreciation of that quest for good life and the so-called "American Dream".

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 !!!!!!!

I feel like I was mislead to see this film. It is promoted as being a new style of documentary film, but in reality, it is a fictional story made by editing and distorting a family's home movies.

There's nothing clever about lying and misleading the audience and making it sound like you are presenting a true story documentary film only to find out that after you've watched the film you were lied to. If the director wasn't there to tell you about some of the fictional elements you might think you watched a true story.

I heard the director speak at a film festival and the first thing he said is "I just want to say that the family did not commit any crimes and we just made it look like they did".

Basically, the director took a bunch of scenes from home movies. Put them out of order and distorted things out of context, put fake time stamps on the scenes to make it appear chronological. The time stamps have nothing to do with actual dates of when the film clips were made. The fake time stamps are merely there to help fake the fabricated fictional story that did not occur.

There were also fabricated fictional elements, and fictional scenes created to help tell the fictional story. For example there is fake news story shown in the film. Also video clips were added that had nothing to do with the family. For example the director leads you to believe you are seeing the family's house burning down. The family lives in the United States. The house on fire is a film clip the director found of a Russian house on fire and the house has nothing to do with the family.

The real fraud is that this movies is not a documentary film even though it described as being a documentary film.

Most people find it boring to watch home movies of people you don't know. Perhaps to convince people to watch this movie, the director had to make up some fake fraud story and mislead people to believe it is a documentary film.

This tactic isn't anything new or revolutionary. PT Barnum used to do that in circus side shows. Blair Witch project also created hype about a fiction found footage documentary. Reality Television shows do the same thing and distort things to create drama in shows that they claim are reality shows.

We don't need false reality "documentaries". Film makers who mislead their audiences trying to get them to watch films that are not what they promoted are not respecting the time or interests of the audience.

It would be like telling people they are going to see a romance movie and then giving them a gory slasher movie. People expect to see what they are lead to believe they are going to see and false advertising is not a good way to attract an audience. I wish I hadn't wasted my time watching this film. I was at a film festival and I missed seeing a good film because this film claimed to be a new form of documentary film making. It is not a documentary. It is fiction.

Saw this film in London and the power of split-second editing is amazing. I may seem a bit reserved with my British characterizations, but the flavor of the family portrayed in the movie is uniquely American. This plot wouldn't seem as plausible with an English family. Nevertheless, I recommend people give Fraud a good watch whenever it goes to VOD.