The recent release of Blair Witch, to considerably lower box office and critical acclaim than anticipated, prompted my colleague Dustin Hall to question whether the film marked the last nail in the coffin of the found footage horror movie, remarking that it would be a “sad, but fitting place to end” the subgenre. This, I think it’s safe to assume, will not be the case; it’s now too well-established a category of horror, no more likely to disappear completely than vampires, zombies or slashers. That said, much as how the initial slasher wave had more or less expired by the end of the 1980s, we’re definitely rising above the age in which found footage is the dominant horror format, particularly as the Paranormal Activity series has finally concluded. Still, the odd found footage movie is bound to pop up here and there, and hopefully as these films become less ubiquitous, we might find these later examples to have a more individual voice, and prove able to utilize the format in a more compelling way.
This was very much my hope with Wekufe: El Origen del Mal, from Chilean director Javier Attridge. From the trailer and premise, it seemed this was a film which would use the found footage approach both to tell an exciting horror story, whilst at the same time exploring a culture which international audiences might not know a great deal about. Done right, horror movies can offer a surprising level of insight into the regional settings; I definitely came out of Juan of the Dead feeling more enlightened on the subject of Cuba. And to an extent Wekufe works, as it has left me curious to learn more about the troubled history of Chile and its current state of affairs. However, in attempting to merge this with a supernatural legend and framing it all around a young couple of out-of-towners filming everything, the film gets a little lost along the way, and sadly winds up returning to territory which is now massively over-familiar.
Paula Figueroa and Matias Aldea (who, in the tradition of The Blair Witch Project, use their own names) are the aforementioned young couple. Paula’s a journalism student, working on a project about the legend of the Trauco, a beast with a horned head and a massive penis, which is said to live in the forests of the island Chiloé, ‘deflowering’ any local virgins who stray from the path. Matias, meanwhile, is a frustrated film school graduate yet to find his break as a director. It seems their mutual interests line up as they head out to Chiloé, primarily so Paula can shoot news report footage speaking to local officials and citizens of the island, but with Matias hoping he can also shoot enough material to make a found footage horror movie out of it all. Yes, it all gets a bit meta, with The Blair Witch Project and many other famed horror movies getting name-checked, and Paula giving a few Sydney Prescott-esque speeches about how lame and predictable they all are. Of course, any revised take on Scream’s rules would surely also have to include that as soon as you start making fun of existing horror movies, you’re marked for death.
Intriguingly, though, Wekufe doesn’t open with the folklore or the typical twenty-something wannabe filmmaker routine, but on footage of a Chiloé local discussing the environmental and economic impact of corporate takeovers in the local salmon fishing industry. The film continues on this thread throughout, tying the Trauco legend with the abundance of rape and incest that occurs in the region, and all the way back to the Jesuit settlers who came to the island centuries earlier. Is the Trauco simply a convenient bogey man on which to pin a multitude of very human sins, or could it actually be a real creature? Either way, this territory is explored in a manner reminiscent of A Serbian Film; not insofar as it piles on displays of grotesque sexual violence (although this does briefly occur), but rather that the film uses the central theme as an allegory of sorts for the state of things in its country of origin.
Alas, all this probably makes Wekufe sound a lot more exciting than it truthfully is. While its opening and closing scenes pack some punch, in the interim there’s simply far too much of the usual found footage padding, with an overabundance of largely tedious conversations between the two leads who – true to form for found footage – aren’t massively endearing to begin with. Beyond a few agreeably bizarre meetings with the masked figures pictured at the top, and a reasonably creepy instance of somniloquy, Wekufe doesn’t really become a horror movie until the last 20 minutes or so, and rather leaves one wishing we’d seen a bit more of the world we get so brief a glimpse of in the final scenes. Still, Attridge and company are to be respected for at least putting forth the effort to make something a bit more meaningful in a subgenre which has long since grown a bit meaningless.
Wekufe: El Origen del Mal is currently screening at festivals around the world. Visit the Facebook page for more information and updates.