Hello all! I'm very excited for this review, because it's a review of a horror movie that I just recently learned about. I'm one of those people that researches film extensively, so very rarely do I come across a movie that I haven't even heard about, let alone seen (like I've said, they're my entire life. I know, it's pathetic).
The best part is that my boyfriend watched it before me, and said that he didn't know if I could handle it. I'm a huge wuss when it comes to horror movies, but for some reason the scarier someone says a movie is, the more I want to see it. I don't know, call me weird. ANYWAY, I said "okay, mystery horror movie. Come at me with your best, bro."
The movie is called The Poughkeepsie Tapes. It's shot documentary style, and it's about a serial killer based in Poughkeepsie, New York, who filmed and documented the abductions, murders, and postmortem mutilations of all of his victims on to 800 VHS tapes, and left police to find them. The "documentary" features interviews with the families of the victims, the investigators who were assigned to the case, and psychological profilers, along with actual footage on the VHS tapes which is just a mixed bag of terrible and disturbing images and situations. The movie can't be found on DVD, but you can watch it on YouTube here.
Just knowing what it was about scared me enough to put off watching it until I mentally prepared myself. And I am so glad I did, because there is some messed up stuff in that movie. So let's get started with pros and cons!
Pros:
1. The VHS stuff is incredible. It feels SO real. Every abduction, every killing feels like you're actually watching someone do these terrible things to perfectly innocent people. They don't use the usual sell-out scares that every other movie in the POV genre uses. It literally made me uncomfortable a lot of the time. There were a couple parts of the movie that I actually could not watch because it just felt too real.
2. They really pushed the envelope in regards to the brutish and truly sick nature of the killer. For example, the first VHS tape they show the audience is a tape of the killer tricking and abducting an 8-year-old girl. THAT is how you're introduced to the killer. Right off the bat I was like, "this is gonna be cussed up." And it only gets worse. Next he abducts a couple on a road trip, beheads the husband and places it in the womb of the wife while she's unconscious, via C-section. Then he wakes her up and films her reaction to his "special surgery." I mean, really?!
At that moment I knew that I wasn't dealing with your usual run-of-the-mill horror film, here. This was seriously heavy stuff.
3. They made the killer smart. Nothing annoys me more than a killer who doesn't know what (s)he's doing. After the first abduction, the killer decides to kill in many different ways, dispose bodies in different ways, and kills randomly; he aims for men, women and children, and even poses as a cop to capture prostitutes. He has no M.O. whatsoever. This throws off the police, who have to try to find him without knowing who is next victim is, where he's located, or what he even looks like. He was able to get away with so many murders because he almost never used the same method of killing twice. He even frames a cop so well that people were convinced that they'd found the killer, and he was sentenced to death for it. THE KILLER KILLED SOMEONE USING THE LEGAL SYSTEM. I just. I didn't even know how to react to that one, except to say "okay. Touche, killer. That was awesome."
4. A killer with no M.O. really pushed the story along nicely. You never knew who his next victim was going to be, so the whole time there's just this uncomfortable air around the whole movie. And you can't be sure of how much they're going to show on the VHS tape, so the anticipation of what you're going to see absolutely kills you. Half the time I was like this: "WHAT ARE YOU ABOUT TO SHOW ME, MOVIE?! WHAT. ARE. YOU. GOING. TO. SHOW. ME." The best part was that it always showed just enough to scare you, but not enough for it to be considered a gross out gore fest. A lot of the suspense comes from what they DON'T show you.
5. The other main character, Cheryl Dempsey (I couldn't find the actress's name; the filmmakers didn't credit the actors in the VHS tapes in hopes of achieving the "based on a true story" vibe) was amazing. She is the one character that the killer didn't kill right off the bat; he abducted her from her home (which was taped) and kept her as a slave for eight years. Yeah. Eight. At the end of the eight years, he left her in his abandoned house along with the 800 tapes for the police to find. She'd been abused sexually, mentally, physically and emotionally, but was alive in the end. One of the final scenes is an interview with Cheryl. She looks almost ghost like as she's being interviewed, and just keeps saying "I loved him, I loved him, my master will come back to me." It's apparent that she developed a sick bond with her kidnapper, which was also disturbing to think about. She eventually kills herself when her "master" doesn't come back for her, and then her body gets stolen from the town graveyard. Yay for happy endings!
Cons:
1. The actors who played police men, investigators, and family of the victims were not good. The scenes in between the VHS tapes were the reason I was able to watch the movie all the way through. It reminds you that it's a movie, which was good for me, because every VHS tape scene made me pee myself I was so scared. But the acting in the "documentary" part of the movie had absolutely nothing on the acting in the VHS tapes.
Fortunately that was my only con for this movie. Everything else about it was suspenseful, frightening, and just plain sick and twisted. I assume it gave me the same feeling that people got when they first watched "Psycho": Never. Showering. While. I'm. Home. Alone. Again. 3 stars for you, Poughkeepsie Tapes!
Thank you for the hidden gem. I will be checking this out soon.
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