Bad Ben (2016)
Tom Riley thought he got the deal of a lifetime... What he got was a nightmare...
Tonight is time for a little experiment. I wanted to show my cousin, who I’ve previously forced (although I guess forced might be a bit over exaggerated) to watch an entry of Paranormal Activity to watch another found footage movie in the same vein and see what he thought of it. See, I love the concept of found footage, but I always feel it’s done kind of cruddy - either it forgets what it’s trying to be and ends up being a worse movie for it, or it ends up feeling incredibly padded out by events being shown that don’t make any sense as to why they would be recorded. Both options brings the genre down, so when I found this little gem on streaming a while ago, i took note of it - and apparently I’m not the only one because they’ve made eight more of them since then! Tonight, we download that cloud footage with Bed Ben.
The story is simple - actually, all parts of this movie are pretty simple. It’s essentially just a one man gig - indeed, the only actor you’ll see is just one guy. Yeah, it means I’m going to have to alter my format a little bit - kind of hard to string out a full paragraph about the acting and characters when there is literally only one on screen in the movie. You know what though? That’s a good thing to keep in mind going into this movie - it’s a little budget affair, probably a passion project or something someone wanted to do and learn things from. It’s not some mega-money sink or something that’s super-hyped to be the scariest thing in the universe. Go in understanding some things might be obvious, or that the acting isn’t exactly Morgan Freeman reading Lord of the Rings, and you’ll open yourself up to far greater enjoyment.
The premise is what you’d see in a lot of ghost story shows on television. Man busy a house for a real steal from the Sheriff’s office at an auction with the intent of flipping it. It’s a nice little house to be sure, but it isn’t long before things start happening - like two break ins where oddly nothing was taken, just furniture rearranged. As time goes on, we get the logical bonus of home security cameras to give us footage on top of the mans video log from his phone, and eventually the new owner catches up to what we know or suspect - this place be haunted! From there, it’s a fight for dominance and survival over the house, as with all his money sunk into it he has nowhere else to go.
The main guy is pretty much everything here. We never really see a ghost - only some shadows and sounds and things moving by themselves. He does a decent enough job in my book, but it’s also pretty obvious that he’s not some super-seasoned movie actor getting payed tons of money. The nice part is that even without that, he puts a lot of energy into it, and a lot of how he acts- including the cursing - is pretty relatable. By the time we get to the more heavy haunting stuff, a lot of folks might be taken out of it from - the classic “why would you do that” or “I’d be out of there” - of course I feel after the pandemic I can never quite trust a person casting judgement on horror movie character logic - and considering the number of folks trapped with a house due to finances that I see on all those haunting television shows, it doesn’t hit me quite as crazy as it does some others.
The single actor
As mentioned, most the ghost action is just invisible stuff and things moving. The effects work around this pretty well, usually using audio effects to indicate things are happening off-screen. When it does show things on-screen, like doors opening or closing, furniture sliding around and the likes, it’s all done well enough that you aren’t popping up and pointing it out. There’s also a fun part with some writing in ashes, although that one shows it’s editing software hands a little bit more than the movements. There’s also even an attack screen that sort of uses a bubble effect - probably the “worst” effect in there, but still it’s nothing that takes you out of it as much as a real bad effect in a high budget flick would.
Audio is balanced pretty well, but a lot of the background noises could use a little bit of boosting if you aren’t in the perfect environment to watch it on account of them being sneaky little knocks and the likes. Subtitles come through fine on Vudu (where I watched it) to help pick up any of the lines you might miss, but it’s never really hard to hear the actor as he delivers things. Ambiance is pretty good - although some might find the constant night bird chirping to be a bit wacky. I already pointed out how they use audio to imply things off-screen, but I should also point out that this time around there isn’t any music for me to forget - unless you include the little music toy. Atmospheric, trying to imply reality, you know how that goes - Blair Witch would be a totally different vibe if it had constant modern pop songs playing over the footage.
The movie does quite a bit with very little, and I would argue handles things better than something like Paranormal Activity for a couple of reasons. First off, it gives you more to do than (at least the first) PA did. Things are happening a bunch, you’re never waiting too long between happenings, but it isn’t resorting to over-abundant jump scares. It makes for a nicer feeling pacing if you ask me. Second, with the addition of home security cameras, you can swap to different rooms and show different things on the prowl or happening without needing a character to be needlessly recording like a camera is attached to their shoulder at all times. Other movies have done some similar things, even the PA series, when they’ve implemented things like baby monitors or laptop cameras, but for some reason found footage creators never seem to readily want to use hard-set cameras like security systems to provide that more open and movie like feel - especially one that reduces any hand-shake that is usually rampant in the genre. This makes it a more enjoyable watch for someone who might normally be put off by the generics of the found footage genre - that slight added authenticity of cloud-based security footage as compared to “I found this phone and made a movie of the murder footage” you get in some spots.
An example of an effect that can be captured in a picture.
The general opinion was what I was hoping for - positive. I really enjoyed it coming off the back of numerous disappointments in the Activity franchise, largely on account of what I felt was squandered potential. This one picks up some of that missed opportunity - but it’s not all improvements, as it is a bit more amateurish and at times less refined. Still, it’s pretty enjoyable, and gets into that spooky atmosphere while keeping a lot of the violence from things like slashers out of the picture. The language used perhaps will keep it at a “watch before showing the kids” and the ideas present can maybe sit a little wrong for some folks - but I find it enjoyable, as did my cousin and apparently tons of others if it got 8 sequels - including one that’s a collection of alternate takes on things that includes the shortest scary movie ever, and I’ll always chuckle about that.