Written and directed by Chris Stuckmann
Starring Camille Sullivan, Brendan Sexton III, Keith David, Robin Bartlett and Michael Beach
USA, 2025
Though I’ve seen his name around, I’m not very familiar with internet film critic Christ Stuckmann’s work on a firsthand basis. I was interested to find out, though, he has a big enough following from his YouTube videos to be able to write and direct a feature length movie with a nationwide release. So, I figured it was worth watching if only for that.
Unfortunately, that’s about all it has going for it.
The story unfolds first as mockumentary, then as straightforward narrative, telling the tale of a group of YouTube personalities who hosted a paranormal investigation channel only to suddenly disappear. Three of their bodies are found, but one is still missing and her sister is dedicated to finding her. Sort of incidentally, a film crew is making a doc about all of this, which we see part of at the start, but that framing device is abandoned early on.
I’m not sure why it’s there, other than to give us an excuse to peer deeply into grainy images trying to see ghostly figures. But, there’s any number of ways that could be achieved without the doc subplot, so I’m still left scratching my head.
Anyway, things go downhill once this framing device is abandoned and the sister (Camille Sullivan) goes on her search. Of course I won’t tell you what she finds except to say to the movie’s credit she does actually find something, which is more than can be said of some of these types of movies. Whether or not that something is worth the watch is up to you, I guess (it’s not).
I won’t repeat that saying about why critics can’t make art, because I hate it, but I will say I was surprised to see unforced errors that caused unintentional laughs. Just as an example, near the beginning of the movie there’s an unexpected suicide and blood splatters on our heroine. We cut away to some other stuff, then cut to later that night and she’s STILL sitting there with blood on her face. Even if she’s traumatized, you’d think an EMT or her husband would have wiped her face off. So, that’s already funny, then the husband goes, “You okay?” Which is hilarious to ask your wife who has been covered in suicide blood for, like, half a day. And she goes, “Yeah,” and then he just gets up and leaves the room. It’s as if an alien wrote it. Or maybe it was…. AI?!?!??!?!?!
For its modest budget, this movie looks good. So if the problems are in the script, maybe Chris Stuckmann has a career ahead of him directing stuff he DIDN’T write?
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