A Guidebook to Killing Your Ex (2016)

Is it just me, or does the ‘found footage’ craze of the past fifteen years or so seem to have died back a little of late? This sub-genre seemed to dominate indie cinema for what seemed like forever, becoming infamous as a go-to model for those on a shoestring budget. Well, found footage films are still out there and they’re still being made, though to be fair, a Hungarian ‘horror comedy’ found footage is a new one on me. This would be A Guidebook to Killing your Ex, then, written and directed by József Gallai – a young filmmaker who has turned his hand to a range of fare so far in his career, from cryptids (the Mothman) to true crime, from spectres to Hungarian-language mumblecore. It’s fair to say that A Guidebook has far more in common with the latter than any of the former, and this fact may be of note to any prospective viewers.

The ‘Guidebook’ transpires to be something like a filmed tutorial, made by a ‘John Doe’ (Balázs Szitás) who explains that he’s going to be narrating his film in English to ensure it reaches the largest possible audience, as well as translating it wherever Hungarian crops up (one has to wonder if he spent a period of time at the end of every day subtitling his work thus far). The tutorial itself is just as the title suggests: Doe has planned that, 72 hours from the start of his film, he’ll be committing the murder of his ex girlfriend and her new partner. The film serves the purposes of being his sounding board, evidence of his preparations, his rationale, and so on. Along the way, we glean the reasons behind his prospective actions and thus gain something of a back story about his character.

Acting convincingly in a foreign language must be difficult, and the English spoken here – together with the performance overall – is of a reasonable standard, generating a plausible and distinctly non-glossy piece of characterisation. The vast share of the film focuses specifically on John Doe, with him filling the screen for most of the time, so a great deal hinges on this. There’s some generation of sympathy here along the way, as this man’s story comes out and you realise that a perfect storm of triggers has led him to this point. The film’s themes – which range through revenge, impressionability, isolation and emotional illiteracy – are given a low-key treatment, and many elements come across successfully. That all said, the crux of this story has been seen a million times, and I’m fairly sure I’m safe from allegations of spoilers when I say that the climax of the film centres around a murdered woman. It’s been done a million times, and utilising the abuse of a largely two-dimensional female character in this way washes a lot of the sympathy out of how I felt about John Doe by the end; his ex becomes a prop, while the film runs through the standard torture-and-murder motif it’s taken an hour to set up. It’s not meant to be ingratiating, of course, but it’s not particularly enlightening either.

The decision to use the found footage framing style makes sense here in many respects, though in common with many other films within this genre, there are a few head-scratching moments. These completed films (this one held in police files post-case) apparently pop up in the form we see them, which suggests (as above) that some sort of editing is going on before films are recovered or, perhaps, that those who find the films edit them into some sort of shape before they’re seen – in which case, the inclusion of things such as John Doe tucking into a meal are odd things to keep in. See also: someone speaking the immortal line “What is the camera for?” Maybe I’m alone in getting hung up on these points, but I think it’s interesting; standard, edited-by-omniscient-storyteller films don’t bring these issues with them. I mentioned that the film had much in common with the ‘mumblecore’ genre, too, and it would seem that lots of the dialogue is improvised – though Doe does look off camera from time to time rather than into it, which means, perhaps, that he is looking at cues. This improvised dialogue – which is reasonably sparky and engaging – is far easier to see as associated with mumblecore than it is to see the film as a whole as a comedy, or a straightforward horror for that matter. There are some absurd elements which veer towards humorous, and in terms of horror there is some slightly grisly footage, but overall, A Guidebook to Killing Your Ex feels a lot more like an experimental , dialogue-heavy film than either a horror or a comedy. Its refusal to sit comfortably in either of the bigger genres is to some extent a strength, but may mean it’s trickier for the film to find its audience.

So, A Guidebook to Killing Your Ex labours under several of the difficulties which have plagued this cheap, accessible but problematic framing device over the years, and it’s open about the fact (via the title) that a familiar kind of resolution is on its way – but it has some spirited dialogue and some decent ideas: it will be interesting to see what this barely-thirty year old director can turn his hand to next. As this is his fourth found footage film in just eight years, I have to say I’m hopeful of seeing a different approach in the future, and to see what he can do beyond these particular confines.