Review by Keri O’Shea
‘Found footage’ is an incredibly popular shooting style for filmmakers these days – now even meriting its own genre – but, whenever you see it used, you know it means a series of trade-offs. Whilst it’s good in that it creates a sense of immediacy, an equality with the protagonists who are on the ground, and provides a cheap, practical framework, it has its downsides. Some of these are just down to how much it’s used, and the anticipation of that familiar nausea from the wildly-veering, shoe-fixated, tripod-less camera. Equally nauseating is the threat of a film which has awarded itself a set of different editing rules; sometimes found footage movies make a good job of these special permissions, whereas sometimes they are stuffed with unnecessary filler to the point that even the characters in the film itself can be heard repeatedly saying, “Do you really have to film everything?” It’s a fair point…
Tape 407 is a found footage movie where the characters ask this very question, and it’s a film which suffers from many of the pitfalls discussed above. Before I’d started to weigh this up, though, the film’s opening premise – of an excitable pre-teen girl, filming every character boarding the flight on which she’s travelling whilst greeting them in the most saccharine ways imaginable – was a fairly effective piece of horror. If I was on a flight like that, I’d be dipping into my hip-flask full of gin before the ‘fasten seatbelt’ light was on. Hell, the whole plane thing is a horror anyway – but I digress. It’s New Year’s Eve, and excitable pre-teen Trish (Abigail Schrader) and her big sister Jessie (Samantha Lester) are on their way home from New York to Los Angeles after a Christmas break. The two girls, and a selection of other travellers including: a veteran wartime photojournalist, a boozy, bald-headed liability, a woman with medical training, a highly professional air hostess and One Spare Brave Dude, have just been invited to celebrate the New Year during the flight (with complementary glittery hats and beads – Ryanair, this ain’t) when the plane hits some bad turbulence. It’s serious, and – with Trish still filming – the plane crashes, leaving those who survive (i.e. pretty much everyone who’s had any dialogue) to contend with something far worse. Something seems to be out there…
I’ll be honest, the direction of the first-hand trauma of the plane crash was actually very effective and frightening. This is where the simplicity of the chosen filming approach comes into its own. Sound is used very well, and the actors’ reactions to the thumps and crashes of the plane struggling to stay in the air feel good and solid. There’s also something quite creepy about having a first-person view of things like the oxygen masks being released – not a sight many of us would fancy. Post-crash, however, the obvious reliance on ad-lib begins to work against the film rather than support it; again, with editing being out of the question due to the format, what we end up with is squabbling. A lot of squabbling, which lasts for far too long. One thing which Tape 407 has is an absolute abundance of dialogue, and much of it is delivered simultaneously as people shout at each other, over each other, repeat what they’ve just said and wonder aloud what to do next. This is probably exactly how frightened people behave, but it is very damaging for narrative tension, and there’s also a fine line between acknowledging that people do stupid things and a barrage of on-screen decisions which make you scratch your head.
That focus on ad lib arguing is a bit of a poisoned chalice for the actors here, but they do their best with what they have been asked to do. They’re seemingly more comfortable when the movie moves out of the various confined spaces it uses, and into interesting outside locations which render the survivors vulnerable, exposed, and able to act as such. Tape 407 has the sense to make the best of the darkness and emphasises how limited these people are in terms of what they can or can’t see as they make their escape from the wreckage. Again, this is an example of what the filmmakers get right. However, they very nearly throw all of that away whenever they’re tempted to reveal what ‘is out there’, and then they settle into the rut of: action-free lull, then an attack, then screaming, then running away, then rinse, repeat. As for what is out there? I will omit to say, but it didn’t come with a high enough budget to make it scary, and in any case, it raised as many questions as it answered.
I don’t know, perhaps this impulse to record absolutely everything isn’t quite as far-fetched as it seems. I don’t do it, it baffles me, but there are people who are forever peering at the world through a camera lens or a smartphone. They’re out there, usually stood right in front of me at gigs. When it comes to making films, however, I think we’re already well into cliché territory with this format, and it’s starting to dawn on audiences and filmmakers alike that ultimately, you still need all of the things which have always made films effective. Just because something’s relatively new does not mean it’s a panacea for coping with a low budget or any of the other issues facing filmmakers in a teeming market, and sadly, for all the little hints of promise, Tape 407 will take its place as ‘yet another found footage movie’, with all the faults common to this genre.
Tape 407 will be released to Region 2 DVD on 21st May, from G2 Pictures. In the US it will be available on April 27th on VOD and select cinemas, retitled Area 407. UPDATE: the UK release date has been changed to 2nd July.