In the border town of Sangre de Cristo, Arizona, something inexplicable happened on the night of June 2, 2011. The town’s entire population of 57 residents was either found dismembered and covered with human bite marks, and the rest of them were never found at all. The only exception was the only survivor of the incident, a man named Francisco Salazar… so the only natural thing to do was labeling him as the prime suspect, of course, as this loner and drifter had also illegally entered the country some years before. Yup, gotta be him! No matter how it would have been impossible for a single guy to commit all those murders in such a short timespan, and how he lacked any motive at all, plus having some of the same bite marks as his supposed victims had. Gotta put the blame on someone, and nothing is better than being able to pin it on an illegal immigrant. However, things definitely do not add up, because here’s also another thing: Salazar brought a camera with him on that night, taking photos of some of the events that transpired. Despite being dismissed by the police, the court, and even his lawyer (of course, as they couldn’t have anything proving he could be innocent, right?) the footage shows that something very sinister really happened on the night of June 2 that year.
Savageland is an mockumentary horror film from 2015, written and directed by Phil Guidry, Simon Herbert, and David Whelan. The trio were colleagues at UCLA and began working on this movie with the intent to create an independent film outside a studio, ultimately making the decision to tie it to the local landscape and have an immigration angle. Most of the actors in this movie didn’t star in any other movie except this one, a common thing for mockumentary movies. Not only is this of course often due to a low budget, but there’s also the big plus of keeping the realism since having well-known actors starring it would take away from that. The man who plays Francisco Salazar, Noé Montes, is also a photographer in real life and an artist whose works deals directly with immigration.
While the found footage horror genre really includes a huge bag of mixed content, it appears there are still some hidden gems to be discovered. Savageland is definitely one of them, and really caught us by surprise. We do tend to quite enjoy a lot of found footage horror movies that are done in the mockumentary style (with the most recent being Strange Harvest, and other goodies involving Lake Mungo and the more lighthearted Digging Up the Marrow), and this was definitely one of the highlights to add to our collection!
Like many typical crime documentaries, this movie aims for as much realism as possible by looking and feeling much like one with authentic-looking interviews and footage. And of course, it displays a narrative where we have an obvious victim (the poor Salazar who’s being framed for everything) and the sleazeballs who wants nothing but seeing him put on death row, guilty or not. Not only does the movie mock how broken the justice system can be, but it also portrays how big a role public media can have in turning people against someone if only one side gets to voice their opinions, here displayed by how the local Sheriff is using the media to influence the case by only focusing on his views while suppressing all other evidence.
While most found footage and mockumentary horror movies focus on showing glimpses through filming, Savageland twists this around and makes it all about found photos instead. And the effect of that is actually pretty darn creepy, with some of the photos being pure nightmare fuel. They’re purposefully distorted, blurry and unfocused, depending on both your eyes and imagination to make out what the hell we’re actually looking at. It reminds me of the good old (very, very old) days on YouTube where you could watch those “scary videos“ compilations that actually featured an array of creepy photos and footage that didn’t just involve some “something moved in my bedroom“ TikTok rot. Ah, those good old days…what a time to be a ghoul. And seeing movies like this gives that good old feeling back again, when you see something that can actually give you a little bit of the heebie jeebies…because hell knows, that’s getting more and more rare these days.
Savageland is not your typical found footage/mockumentary horror, and proves that there’s always new ways to tell a familiar narrative!
Writers and directors: Phil Guidry, Simon Herbert, David Whelan
Country & year: USA, 2015
Actors: Heather Moore, Lars Nielsen, J.C. Carlos, Lawrence Ross, George Lionel Savage, Noe Montes, Daniel Kafer, Monica Davis, Renee Davies, Len Wein, Dan Trabulus
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3899154/
We are in the 1970’s, and Dr. Henry West has created an institute in order to research people with supposed supernatural abilities. When a woman named Judith Winstead arrives at the facility, Dr. West gets to experience a series of amazing abilities for the first time. In fact, Judith’s supernatural powers even gains the attention from the U.S. military, who assumes control over the lab under orders of national security in hopes of utilizing Judith’s powers as a weapon. But something is not quite right with Judith…and it becomes clear that her supernatural powers are stemming from something else than herself…
Before 
A young girl (Melissa) is playing nearby the pond close to her family’s residence, and finds a cute little crab whom she names Pee-Wee (yeah, you could probably make some STD jokes here). She decides to keep it, and starts to feed it some of the weird fruit from her father’s laboratory where he’s experimenting on a formula to make things grow larger. Soon, Pee-Wee starts to grow much bigger (I’m talking about the crab, of course). After an accident that kills both of Melissa’s parents, she lets Pee-Wee back into the pond and goes to live with her uncle, the town sheriff. Many years later, Melissa is still caring for her secret giant crab pet (who is, despite the name, actually a female). All is well until “Pee-Wee” gets some huge crab babies that start to cause trouble all over town…
Brodie is a heavy metal-outcast whose meth-head mom is sent to a mental ward after trying to give a mall-santa a blowjob, and thus he needs to live with his uncle, aunt and cousin. They are “some good Christians”, by the way, who thinks Ricky Martin is the heaviest thing they’ve ever heard. Not much in common between him and them, in other words. His cousin is a complete sport-idiot-psychopathic douche who calls Brodie a “devil worshipper” and bullies him at school, but at least he’s got two friends at school who thinks playing board games at lunchtime is the most badass thing to do.
«The Devil’s Candy» is an indie horror movie written and directed by Sean Byrne. I found out about this movie while watching some horror trailers on Youtube, and thought “an indie horror film that actually seem to have a high visual standard, and doesn’t look like it’s made out of 90% close-up shots? Let’s see what this is about”.