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Found footage films can be wonderful, and Kipp Tribble's Char Man is the latest in a storied lineage probably still best perpetuated and name-checked by The Blair Witch Project.
Tribble's film takes place in the the inland California community of Ojai, home to way too many Grateful Dead fans and probably a spare Sasquatch or two. So it's a bit genius that this town of renowned funk would serve as the off-kilter home of the elusive Char Man, an urban legend that we're first told originated after a fire in 1945. It comes to pass that during that fire, only one home was left neglected by responders, whom upon correcting that oversight found a boy dressed in strips of his father's skin as dad's body was hanging from a nearby tree. Outstanding.
Found footage actors are often fed concepts to ramble over as opposed to carefully constructed lines of dialogue. This stylized, shoot-from-the-hip brand of acting tends to make or break these films, and Char Man thrives because its male leads are very convincing in this space. At first they're cocky bros with a knack for witty repartee, but as the film turns creepy, the actors effectively lead us in that downturn and manifest the afraid-of-the-dark truths that most of us still have within us. In the end, what we're left with is a shrewdly convincing film. Kudos to Tribble and his team for manipulating a well-established genre and coming away from it with some highly effective storytelling.
score 10/10
TheAll-SeeingI 21 February 2019
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw4678322/ |
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1-12-2019 15:02:52