Tom Riley has just bought a house at a price that is way below market value. With intentions of “flipping” it (a term for buying a house and selling it later for a profit) he goes through the house while filming the entire process with his iPhone. After residing in the house for a short while, however, he notices strange happenings, and decides to set up a bunch of surveillance cameras both inside and outside. At first he’s convinced that people are breaking into the house…but soon, he realizes that he might be dealing with something paranormal.
Bad Ben is an odd little horror film. With “found footage” horror movies being all over the place these days, it feels like everyone with a camera and some video-editing software can make their own addition to the genre. While the majority of these movies have a very limited cast and budget, they still manage to (sometimes) turn out as quite decent films. And it kind of feels like Nigel Bach once joined in a discussion about this topic, simply said “Hold my beer”, and went and made a found-footage movie in his own home with himself being the only person involved. Yes, you read that right. This is a 1-man movie. Filmed with an iPhone and the rest consisting of security camera “footage”, with a budget of only $300.
Now, an idea like this sounds like the perfect recipe for a disaster of a movie, which could only be appreciated by close friends and family. But to our surprise, we found that it’s actually quite decently made for what it is. And since nearly every single found footage horror movie includes a cast with teens/young people, it was actually a bit refreshing to see a grumpy, middle-aged man who is more pissed off at the goings-on than afraid of it. The movie does have a tone of humor in it, and it manages to keep you captivated throughout the protagonist’s exploration and experiences. It is also kinda fascinating and somewhat inspiring that the entire movie was made as a one-man-show, and part of the entertainment value comes from keeping this in mind.
Bad Ben is not a horror movie that will be appreciated by everyone, but for those of us that watch horror movies on a regular basis and has trudged through a ton of various indie horror, it’s easy to see why Nigel Bach’s Bad Ben found a fan base. Bad Ben has turned into a series of a total of 7 movies (so far).
Director: Nigel Bach
Country & year: USA , 2016
Actors: Nigel Bach
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt6269810/
We are introduced to the YouTube channel Prankstaz.tv, run by two mildly sociopathic douchebags who make prankster-videos where they break into a morgue (among other things) and takes a selfie with one of the cadavers. And all just to see those precious views on YouTube. Reminds me of a certain guy with a similar channel who went to Suicide Forest in Japan in late 2017, to film a fresh corpse hanging from a tree and laugh at it and mock it afterwards. So, here we get a satirical glimpse at how toxic and obnoxious the YouTube prankster-community can be, and how far they are willing to push the shock factor to get the desired attention and views.
“Hell House LLC” starts with some news-clips where we learn that an abandoned hotel, which has been transformed into a haunted house tour in a small town outside New York, ended in disaster on 8th October 2009. Several people were killed and injured, and nobody knows what really happened, but the police vaguely blames the outburst on a major malfunction. With the suspicion that the police are holding back some info from the public, it creates conspiracy theories among some local journalists who starts their own investigation. They get in contact with one of Hell House’s crew members, Sarah, who gives them all the raw footage that documents the whole process which spans from August 23rd to October 8th. When she is asked why she hasn’t turned this over to the police, she simply says “you’ll see”. Alright, so let’s take a look.
Grave Encounters is a “found footage” horror movie about a reality TV series where three paranormal investigators visists historic haunted landmarks in the United States, like we’ve seen in “Ghost Hunters”, “Ghost Adventures” and numerous more of these shows that’s exploded in the recent ten years. But “Grave Encounters” was ahead of its time, according to what a producer tells us in the introduction before the movie starts. The film revolves around the sixth episode of “Grave Encounters” where the entire crew were to inspect an abondened haunted asylum where they disappeared and were never seen again. The only thing that was found was the 70-hour raw footage trimmed down to the last episode. And the producer that introduces us to the episode also tells us that what we’re about to watch is real, has not been tampered with, and just been edited strictly to cut down the time.