Mothman

Because of the accepted and expected lower production quality of found footage movies, there has been a massive wave of these in the last 10 years. While it may be simpler to film than a traditional movie, few of them ever put the still required effort and imagination into the script, characters, plot, etc. This is not one of those movies. Mothman is a slow burn, yes, but with a payoff and some genuinely creepy sequences along the way and mysteries to be solved.

I'm a sucker for cryptoids anyway. I'm happy this one played with the mothman mythos and expanded on it in a way that felt original. And thankfully there is much more here than young adults running around in the dark woods for 90 minutes without seeing anything until the final frames.

.... STAY FOR THE CREDITS!....

I don't mind low budget films if the story is good. And I could see what they were going for my doing it as an interview documentary. I have liked other films in this style. But it wasn't engaging at all, the actors have no charisma. So it was just really dull. I didn't think the script helped with this, the dialogue was really awkward.

The sound quality was really poor too, which adds to it being really dull. It's hard to watch no charisma flatline acting with poor sound quality taking away anything they might have had.

The camera work isn't great either. So it felt like this film had nothing to it.

Following the conversation with locals over what they've heard about the legend and the haunted forest, Amanda and Tim head towards the woods to uncover the truth about what happened to her little brother. That is when everything goes in a spiral. Although the video shoots remain, the purpose behind the recording shifts to showing all the twisted sounds that they hear at night and the constant breakdowns that the couple experiences. What was supposed to be a cool project, becomes a living nightmare.

That is why Joshua Brucker deserves a round of applause. The way they made a low-budget vision into a horrific reality-driven scenario is what makes this film worthwhile. The film brilliantly subverts the classic horror structure by demonstrating that life can be more frightening than any jump scares or spooky supernatural figures. Sometimes, our greatest fears in real life can haunt us more than watching a final girl sequence. After all, when you are watching a movie that presents characters, story arcs, and a few terrifying encounters, you can be scared but detached from what is presented onscreen. But when you watch things shot with a regular camera in a normal-looking scenario where all your worst nightmares come true, it is hard to not feel affected and even tormented by this possibility. With superb improvisations and clever use of camerawork, this production will make you fall into its realistic trap. Nevertheless, it does bring you back to planet earth with its abrupt ending and repetitive feel towards its final quarter. This misstep prevents the film from excelling from start to finish, but it doesn't stop it from being a worthwhile cult classic watch.

Mothman, a new found footage movie that can be watched on Tubi, was not quite what I expected, and I'm still not sure if I like or dislike it. It's clear the filmmaker knows his Mothman lore, as it definitely includes aspects and minor details that I was not expecting, and as a fan of the legend I really appreciated that.

However, it can be a real slog to get through as the majority of the movie is just random interviews with people about their friend/family member that went missing, and the police investigation into it. The parts that DO focus on the actual Mothman lore was pretty good though, and did genuinely get creepy at times by the end (when the creepiness wasn't ruined anyway, like the scene with Indrid Cold, hiding his face, only to reveal it a min later and it not be nearly as creepy as what you were imagining in your head). The acting was also surprisingly great here, and I think the biggest surprise of the movie was just how good that acting was for a project like this.

This movie was less creature feature than I was expecting, and more psychological dread, which was a unique angle to take for found footage, and I'm not sure it was executed well, but I do like what they were attempting, and that angle does fit the Mothman mythos more than a creature feature would, so... yeah, I really can't decide if I like this or not, lol.