Review by Stephanie Scaife
Here we are again with yet another found footage film, this time in the guise of Black Water Vampire, which you may have guessed from the title is about a vampire. Now, to its credit the concept is a fairly original one as I don’t recall ever having come across a found footage vampire movie before; however that’s where the originality begins and ends with this movie. What I endured was a 79 minute slog through the usual tried and tested tropes of the genre, literally shouting WHY ARE YOU EVEN STILL FILMING?! at the screen every ten minutes.
Maybe I had been spoiled in recent months with the commendable and actually really rather good Willow Creek and The Borderlands, two found footage horror films that had miraculously managed to make me reconsider everyone’s least favourite genre by bringing large doses of humour and genuine chills to what is more often than not a motion sickness-inducing exercise in tedium. Black Water Vampire has successfully brought me back down on the side of believing that found footage is not for me, and whilst there have been one or two exceptions this remains an infuriating genre that cheaply churns out straight-to-DVD movies on the assumption that someone somewhere will watch it, and with horror they always do, ensuring a quick buck for the production company and a shoddy product for the viewer.
As is generally the case with these things we have a group of intrepid filmmakers setting out to make a documentary, in this instance on the subject of the Black Water killings, a series of grisly murders that have occurred every ten years for the past forty, each time with the mutilated body of a young woman sporting mysterious bite marks on her neck cropping up in the woods. Local recluse Raymond Banks has been convicted of the crimes and is now on death row, despite the fact that he clearly would have been a child when the first murder occurred as the actor is in his 40s (something that is never addressed in the film). Plucky local girl Danielle has decided that Banks must be innocent due to his conviction being based on a confession that was obtained after 16 hours of questioning and no actual physical evidence being found. Local specialists are also fairly keen to write off the mysterious bite wounds as wolf bites, when it’s clear to anyone with eyes they aren’t. So what is going on in the town of Black Water and why is Banks taking the blame, seemingly at the behest of the shifty looking locals?
So off they trek into the mountains to find the murder site, and pretty much straight away things don’t go to plan. First of all someone paints a symbol on their tent in what appears to be blood, then there’s a creepy old lady that’s following them, then one of them disappears (inconveniently with the only map), so everyone is left lost and oh look, there is a vampire after all. Don’t worry, I won’t spoil the ending, not that you’re likely to care even if you do make it that far into the movie. You may think I’m being overly harsh but I really am just fed up with seeing the same shit over and over again, and The Black Water Vampire gets an A-grade in Lazy Filmmaking 101.
The editing is all over the place and doesn’t make sense if you are expected to buy into the found footage concept at all; cuts happen mid-take, and obviously there would be no reason for the person holding the camera to stop filming or for the person being filmed to stop and wait to continue what they’re saying, especially as we’re supposed to buy into the fact that they’re in mortal peril. The camera is handily dropped into the perfect position to frame the action, and regardless of what’s going on or who has been torn apart by the vampire, someone still goes and picks it up AND CONTINUES FILMING.
I couldn’t decide if the dialogue was badly scripted or badly improvised by the actors, but either way it’s bad. People contradict themselves and each other, make frankly bizarre banter and behave in an altogether unrealistic manner throughout. Honestly, if I never see another found footage film again then it’ll be too soon.
Black Water Vampire is available now from Image Entertainment.