‘Man Finds Tape’ Review: A Found-Footage Angle Both Complicates and Hobbles Intriguing Horror Debut

Though not a Pentecostal horror movie, “Man Finds Tape” does feature both sermonizing and snake-handling (of a sort). The tie between those two elements is murky, however, as is much else about this first feature by writer-directors Peter Hall and Paul Gandersman. They’ve got some interesting ideas gathered in a convoluted narrative involving odd behavior and strange phenomena in the fictitious small town of Larkin, Texas. 

But the “Weapons”-like atmospherics that would have suited it best are muffled by hewing to a quasi found-footage format, whose alleged various sources further complicate the telling without really heightening its mystery. The result plays more like an extended “Twilight Zone” episode than the frightening descent into fiendish supernatural conspiracy that’s presumably intended. Magnet is releasing to limited U.S. theaters as well as on-demand platforms Dec. 5. 

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Filmmaker Lynn Page (Kelsey Pribilski) starts her sporadic voiceover narration with a gratuitous discussion of folkloric terrors that have supposedly been evidenced by video or photos, like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster. “Not all monsters are a hoax,” she later tells us, returning to that theme at the end of a story it really doesn’t have much connection to. What unfolds between isn’t a tale of people fervently wanting to believe in a probably-mythological being, but a community preyed upon in ways that seem to get erased from their collective memory.

Her brother Lucas (William Magnuson) has called Lynn from their late parents’ house, apparently distraught over whatever he’s learned in the wake of finding an old camcorder cassette labeled with his name. Its disturbing contents show him asleep in bed as a boy, approached by a shadowy intruder who wakes the child just long enough to place something in his mouth. Seeking answers to this creepy scene, Lucas posted it and his own subsequent investigations on YouTube. Those viral clips have gained him social-media fame, if also an audience of skeptics who assume it’s all “fake.” As does Lynn, at first — apparently her brother has a long history of “obsessive behavior” and pathological lying. He swears this time it’s different. Still, Lynn only makes the five-hour drive from her current city of residence to Larkin when, worryingly, he stops answering her calls and texts.

She finds him in a state of seizure, unconscious before the computer screen, though he appears okay once roused. Such “blackouts,” and subsequent amnesia about their happening, seem to have become epidemic among locals. They might not have been noticed at all if a surveillance camera hadn’t caught an intersection at high noon, around which all citizens seemed to freeze-frame for a few moments — but not a car rolling down the street, which crushes a pedestrian unlucky enough to be in its path just as the “time out” occurs. 

Lucas comes to believe all this is somehow linked to Rev. Endicott Carr (John Ghoulson), the local cleric whose public-access show the Pages’ parents — both dead from an “undiagnosable” illness years prior — had shot as part of their video-centric business. It may also involve Lucas’ ex-girlfriend Wendy (Nell Kessler), who happens to now be carrying the Reverend’s baby as a surrogate. And it’s surely connected to a black-clad stranger (Brian Villalobos) newly surfaced in town, skulking about everywhere with an ancient-looking surgeon’s satchel like a latterday Jack the Ripper.

Now investigating together, Lynn and Lucas soon witness alarming incidents involving all of those figures. Eventually, we get some fantastical imagery, including nasty serpent-like parasites and a seemingly endless spiral staircase. But while there’s apparent resolution to Larkin’s plight, there is no real explanation to these wonders, or indeed the whole community’s two-decades-plus of surreptitious peril. 

That ambiguity would be less frustrating in a movie more attuned to building suspense and frights, less tethered to a cluttered array of mock “evidence.” There’s video the siblings shoot themselves, surveillance footage, FaceTime calls, voicemails, onscreen text messages, old home movies, clips from the Reverend’s “Salvation Hour” show and so on. It’s an occasionally confusing audiovisual mosaic, in various aspect-ratio formats and degrees of image degeneration, that feels more cluttered than clever. 

The character dynamics are intriguing enough, the narrative progress unpredictable enough, that you might wish their potential were maximized by a more straightforward presentation — instead of having to cut through umpteen layers of “found” media. As with all framing chatter about hoaxes, the emphasis on technology ultimately proves rather beside the point of what emerges as “Man Finds Tape’s” core: a novel comingling of organized religion and occult or sci-fi menace. 

That said, Hall and Gandersman compel enough interest to pull viewers through, even if they may find the fadeout less than satisfying. Performances are generally persuasive, tech and design contributions apt, though only Jimmy LaValle’s original score gets to fully step outside the pretense of pre-recorded material and ratchet up a mood of menace.