Horror has a sturdy monitor report of proving the Found Footage subgenre can result in scares with out the necessity for obscene ranges of money to fund it. The Blair Witch Project, as an example, grew to become some of the influential and financially profitable movies of the Nineties and it ran with a budget of $35,000-60,000. It labored as a result of it used every little thing it may in service of the story. It had a sense of lore to it, progressive and standard-setting use of the found footage fashion, and a great forged of characters that put within the work to make audiences purchase into the fake plausibility of it. Attention to element on these three components can yield a superior instance of horror for others to observe.
Ricky Umberger’s Project Eerie follows this instance nicely, and exhibits it realized a lot from what got here earlier than it for a found footage horror anthology that values story, lore, and execution over the bells and whistles that greater budgets supply the luxurious of.
It’s Halloween within the yr 2020 and the Covid pandemic has cancelled trick r’ treating. Two bored youngsters determine to livestream a evening of mischief which leads them to an deserted facility the place they come across secret information belonging to one thing known as Project Eerie. They discover a CD, return to their place to discover its contents, after which determine to observe the movies contained in it whereas livestreaming the entire thing. Three separate vignettes tied to an overarching story play out, providing sturdy hints as to the issues that have been being studied in that deserted facility.
The attract of each horror anthology is its capability to take you utterly abruptly with tales you already know nothing of beforehand. Project Eerie pulls this off by making the children’ early discovery open up a compelling thriller surrounding the existence of the movies. The three tales contained observe a man and his daughter going on a tenting journey to a abandoned park with a creepy park ranger hovering over them, two associates on a manhunt for a person with a bounty on his head after he allegedly killed his household below unusual circumstances, and a pair of paranormal investigators taking pictures an episode of their present in Amish nation.
Umberger sticks to a stable and dependable construction that permits every story to hold a palpable sense of buildup. They all begin within the daytime, the place characters get the prospect to arrange for his or her actions whereas additionally presenting a little bit of themselves to the viewers. As evening takes over, a good sense of character and place has already been established in order that the darkish can go on to disclose the issues hiding in it.
Running for a lean 76 minutes, Project Eerie by no means outstays its welcome and is beneficiant with its terrors. There’s a shocking quantity of sensible results on show, with some excellent creature designs besides. It’s all relatively economical, nevertheless it works. Blood, gore, and prosthetics are all used with intention and are measured accordingly. Nothing ever got here throughout as red-tinted corn syrup and low cost Halloween masks. Umberger’s deft camerawork places the main target on these results simply sufficient to each promote us on the story and to indicate imaginative and prescient and creativity go a good distance in producing micro-budget horror.
While every story succeeds on their very own deserves, the primary story – the daddy/daughter tenting journey – is definitely probably the most achieved one. There’s a lot of story sprinkled all through it, with visible cues that invite interpretation on the issues which can be left obscure sufficient for it. The park ranger is terrifying sufficient to warrant a full-length characteristic simply to see extra of him and his odd method of talking. It’s good and eerie, dwelling as much as the film’s title.
Project Eerie wins you over with cleverness, creativity, and pure weirdness. Should it result in extra entries additional on (like V/H/S earlier than it), it already has a stable basis to maintain it. It’s films like these that may encourage individuals not solely to hunt out extra horror, but in addition to make horror.
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