By Quin
I have long had an optimistic view of the found footage sub-genre. Even though I can count on five fingers the ones I’ve really loved, I recognize a found footage film really has the potential to deliver something innovative and truly frightening. However, after seeing Justin Doescher’s film The Break-In, I have to say that I think I’m done defending found footage films.
Doescher makes so many of the mistakes that critics have screamed about, when discussing found footage, for over a decade and a half. The storytelling is thin and predictable, with the characters seeming to only exist in the moment, and when they aren’t on screen, they just evaporate until their next scene. In other words, they don’t seem real. Almost every conversation takes place only to move the plot forward and this makes the characters two dimensional as well as stereotypical. Then there’s the things I don’t even need to mention at this point – super shaky camera, flimsy excuses to keep filming, and the throwing of logic and the film’s own set of rules out the window. Oh, and remember after The Blair Witch Project came out, the biggest complaint was about how you never saw the witch? As much as I hated that criticism back in 1999, I’m going to cry out something similar here…that was “the break-in” that the title promises? Please. It’s a burgle with a slight twist at best. If you are looking for a home invasion movie (because those can be pretty damn scary when done right) this is not one of those. Seriously. It’s a burgle.
Okay, I’m already getting way ahead of myself and getting all worked up way too early in this review. If I don’t slow down, I’ll just tell you the twist ending and then we can be done with it. But I really shouldn’t do that, and I won’t. The Break-In is about a couple, Jeff and Melissa, who are expecting a baby, and they have moved into a new place next door to their friends – another couple. Excited about the new place and the new security system, Jeff uses his iPhone to constantly film what’s happening. This is mostly a whole lot of nothing other than boring conversations where they talk about specific dates when they won’t be home as well as shots of Jeff punching in secret codes to unlock the front door. Why would anyone do these things? It’s also revealed early that the friends living next door have the codes to the front door in case of an emergency. Of course, that’s just an excuse to have some uh-oh moments late at night when there are noises. You’re supposed to jump, but it’s probably just the neighbor.
The friends next door mention that some other friends of theirs had had a break-in at their house. Well, thank goodness for the new security system, right? The next day, Jeff gets a knock at the door. It’s a detective going around the neighborhood, talking to everyone about the recent string of break-ins. He asks all kinds of specific questions that seem like quite a stretch that a police officer would need to know; things like where the fuse box is and wanting to physically look at it. Jeff doesn’t find the questions weird at all and he seems thrilled to have a cop on his side to go with the security system. This new place should be air-tight. No burglars are gonna burgle this place. No sir. The detective also tells him to keep that iPhone recording. Whatever it catches can be used as evidence and sometimes there are clues in the background.
Are you still with me? There’s a little more, but if you’ve already lost interest, I’ll understand. Jeff and his pregnant wife are out jogging through the neighborhood. When they return home, they notice a man standing in front of their house staring up at it. Jeff yells and the guy takes off. That night, the security alarm goes off, prompting the detective to tell Jeff the name of their prime suspect (something the police would never do) and of course he googles the guy and drives to his house. Alright, I’m going to stop there. This is all building ever so slowly to a climax that lasts about the final eight minutes of the movie. During the eight minutes there is technically a break-in taking place on screen. This is also where The Break-In forgets it’s a found footage movie and gets all Freudian and avant-garde (I use both of those terms extremely loosely.) The Break-In strives to be the Inception of found footage movies – a found footage movie within a found footage movie and the results teeter toward laughable.
Two of the best films from 2015 were Tangerine and Victoria. Both had exceedingly low budgets and were shot quickly. Victoria is a masterpiece in innovation and technicality; it’s a film that lasts over 2 hours, it features a love story and a bank robbery and the whole thing is captured in one continuous take. Tangerine takes place on the streets of Los Angeles and it’s 90 minutes of two transsexual prostitutes looking for their pimp. The whole thing was shot on a few different iPhones and it’s beautiful to look at and it tells a simple but captivating story. In both of these films we care about the people. The stories are simple but true to the characters.
The Break-In was also shot entirely on an iPhone. Sure, the picture quality is okay, but its fatal flaw is that the use of the iPhone is just part of the gimmick. It really doesn’t care about entertaining you or showing you people who may be different than you, but you love them anyway. It’s just cookie-cutter actors playing with an Apple product and everyone is hoping to cash in on a genre that has run its course.
Don’t forget to lock your doors and windows, folks. There’s a deus ex machina on the loose and it’s trying to burgle your home.
The Break-In is available now for rent or purchase on Vimeo.
The Break-In from Justin Doescher on Vimeo.