There's Something in the Shadows (2021)
If You Go Down To The Woods Today…
I’ve been too kind to you lately. I’ve been treating you to these brand new movies that have had plenty of good things said about them, and haven’t been digging deep enough into the whirling waters of the cinematic pool to really get you to appreciate them. Although I don’t actively seek out bad movies, sometimes you get the pitch of a movie and know it’s probably not destined for greatness. Perhaps, you think to yourself, if I give it a watch it will impress me, as though if enough people watch it it’ll become a cult classic that somehow makes it better like a role playing game hero who just leveled up. Well, I have a penchant for watching dang near anything, and when it’s only 3 dollars on the line I can be a very forgiving guy - but will tonight’s entry be enough to remind me of the reasons why I don’t dwell out in the woods, or of movies that I don’t often revisit instead? Tonight, There’s Something in the Shadows.
A group of friends go out in the woods to hunt for monsters, get lost and are never seen again, and someone else finds all of the footage and decides to cut it together and make a movie out of it. Sound familiar? Yep, it’s a found footage movie! Much like all of them, it has a long lineage of movies, often ill-received, to pay homage to. For this one, it has one major film in mind - the original Blair Witch film. Yes, the premise is a bit more inline with the common “paranormal hunters” shows we all know by this point, with cut-in shots talking about how terrifying everything was and pretty scenery shots to help pad out episode time, but it’s essentially very much praising the Witch film in execution, down to a large amount of interpersonal drama between some of the characters. Of course, where this one differs is the very real implication that monsters are actually out in the woods eating people - and it verily goes just short of showing the things to drive it home
So the plot isn’t the most elaborate. It does facilitate the movie though, so although it’s not exactly the most interesting or novel of stories, it does it’s job quite well in that regard. What this does do though is put a lot of the lifting on the characters, effects, camerawork, and actors - because the idea of the story is enough to get you to watch a trailer and pretty much nothing more. In regards to the characters, I admittedly have to say they ain’t bad. They do a good job of feeling like real people, with the most out-there being the would be star of the show who in his own right isn’t so much unbelievable as much as just potentially unrelatable to some. I mean, if I’m being honest not everyone has someone who is super spiritual, or into cryptids and aliens and things that go bump in the night, and in turn it can seem a bit ilke a goof even though I don’t feel like it’s actually that bad. Amped up a little for entertainment perhaps, but not out place.
The actors do a good job here as well. Again, they all do a wonderful job of just feeling like a patch of natural idiots out in the woods having a good time in the name of searching for paranormal stuff - be it portals, monsters, ghosts, or just weird noises. Chemistry is pretty good, and line deliveries are believably toss as one would expect from a group that isn’t some well oiled acting team. Well all of that having been said, it can certainly be a bit dramatic at times, playing it up for the camera while trying not to be too over the top, much like the ever-remembered super-snotty face cam shots from Blair Witch. Some will be happy to know that most of the character reactions brought to life by the actors feel reasonable, including the “this is getting intense, let’s bail” that usually would get thrown out for a “let’s investigate it by poking the monster with a stick and seeing if he eats us!” or drunken partying in most horror flicks.
Banana finders incorporated.
Unfortunately, that’s about where the praise is going to really start withering off. Although the actors do a good job, this is a found footage movie - which means that ninety percent of the film is going to feel (and essentially be) pointless padding scenes of uneventful interaction between characters until in the final act things start going crazy. The framework of the pitch -that of a paranormal documentary show - gives it plenty of potential to try and be interesting in this down time, but largely it’ll be a bunch of people just shooting the crap and making jokes at each others expense with the occasional quick throw away “look at this reading” or “you hear those noises"?” scene. The other part of the genre, the one that almost consistently always bears the largest weight of it’s sins, is also here. Yep, that camera work is just oof. Every now and then it’ll queue up like a documentary show, but there’s isn’t a moment in this movie that you expect something more than hand held was done until someone sets a camera down on a chair. Is it expected? Yes, but that doesn’t mean I have to enjoy it.
Of course, with a movie about monsters and paranormal stuff you would expect some neat visual effects, even if done poorly. Well, here we get very few - in fact, the largest amount of the appear in the trailer, where it plays a opening reel to the fake documentary (which also is the start of the movie, after the obligatory “this is found footage” text walls) where we see all sorts of spooky things like chairs moving themselves, people getting possessed, all of that cool jazz. In the movie proper though, you’ll get lights. Well, technically you get a light, some light-up eyes, and two dead things. The movie obviously isn’t about being a special effects masterpiece, and after watching that it’s pretty obvious, but some might be disappointing to know there isn’t much of that going on. Any deaths are off screen. The eyes and the light are pretty well done, even if they are pretty simple, and you do get the fun night-vision green and camera interference cuts if you include those as effects work though.
Of course, I do always hate leaving it on such a sour note, so how about audio? Well, lines are delivered well. Everyone has an accent, very European (British I would believe). That makes it a bit more fun to listen to, although their choice of using miles and feet as a measurement strikes me as a bit odd, but I’m guessing they are trying to appeal to a largely dense American audience abroad (I’m one of them by the way, so I can make fun of them). While the music department lacks - honestly, outside of a ring tone I don’t think there’s any real music in here) - I can say that the audio foley stuff is pretty good. Yes, the constant wind-blowing in the mic when recording on windy times can be annoying (albeit realistic), but things like whoops, foot stomps, branches cracking and all the fun of nature work quite well. I would also make a comment about things getting unnaturally quiet being kind of cool - if I ever thought it was intentional and not just something wrong while I was watching the movie. That’s the problem with watching a movie through streaming services, you can never really tell where a problem might lie!
Just a speck in the dark.
Fans of The Blair Witch movie and paranormal shows might enjoy this one more than others. I’ve seen a lot of found footage movies, and almost always come out wishing they would live up to their true potential. Too late in the the game to get the full effect of the original Blair, too out of the game to appreciate the Paranormal Activity franchise - There’s plenty of movies I can say this one is better than in it’s own genre. Granted, I wouldn’t say this is one people should necessarily go out of their way to find if they aren’t found footage fans, but for a three dollar rental it wasn’t bad. The strong point was the portrayal of a group of friends and not casting too much light into the shadows, but the weak points are some of the same things to haunt the genre for years.