DOCUMENTING THE GREY MAN

DOCUMENTING THE GREY MAN

The modern horror pantheon giveth, and it taketh away. I love supernatural horror, but I dislike the 'found footage' framework though which it's so, so often brought to the screen these days. For me, the problems inherent in films like Paranormal Activity override any genuine scares which might be there. So, it was with mixed feelings that I sat down to watch Documenting The Grey Man, a movie which openly describes the format it uses in its opening text screen: it tells us that police were called to a residence in Pawley's Island, South Carolina, where, through the footage they found, they pieced together the story of a now-missing family and film crew, except for a sole filmmaker, left in a catatonic state...

Essentially, a wannabe documentary film crew decides they want to cover the SC legend of the 'Grey Man', a largely-benign spectre, but one which a local family, the Simms, believes is haunting their home, rather than just the beach where 'he' has typically been seen in the past. The spook seems to have an unpleasant interest in their seven year old daughter, Katie, too. How this crew chiefly differs from others who want to explore hauntings, though, is that they don't believe a word of the case they're investigating. Instead, they decide to fake their interest in the Grey Man, right down to getting one of their party to impersonate a concerned psychic, so that they can show once and for all that this sort of supernatural mumbo-jumbo is "bullshit". Of course, an outlook like that is a shoe-in for a horror movie. Of course, the family seems utterly sincere; of course, things get caught on camera; of course, the smug film crew has to accept that there are more things in heaven and earth, etc.

Here's my main problem with this format, in a nutshell: it is treated as an easy deal, something which anyone with any budget can do, and it isn't. I'm a big fan of The Blair Witch Project, but it's hexed the indie film market in ways the BWP filmmakers can never have expected and can't really be blamed for. For me, there are huge questions about what gets left in, and what gets left out; these documentaries, where they're meant to be found as-is, in an unfinished, unpolished state, occupy an uncomfortable hinterland between 'genuine' (i.e. absolutely nothing has been taken away, this is unedited footage and as such is full of irrelevant filler and running feet) and 'entertaining', or in other words – having a plot. Balancing these two is a tough job, and very few films can do it. Here, the start of the film juggles the sort of behind-the-scenes footage which allows us, the audience, in on the lie, but also contains what looks like completed, edited footage of the documentary, complete with soundtrack. Then we're back to real-time footage, which is slow. From this first thirty minutes of lull, things pick up, but they do so by using a lot of over-familiar markers – a séance, some night vision, a creepy contorting kid, screaming girls, and exaggerated, jumpy cuts between filming sections with the obligatory on-screen static. Where it's in any way original, it's unconvincing within its format, and where it's less original, it veers straight into formulaic.

This film isn't the worst example of this genre I've seen, though (talk about damning with faint praise!) The sets are attractive, and the house itself looks good on camera. The film quality looks pretty good, despite obvious budget restrictions, and – something which is hugely important – Documenting The Grey Man knows not to stretch itself out for far too long. Where it falls down is just where all the other low-budget 'shakycam' movies fall down – through the certainty that anyone can create a scary film with no money. Creating scares is as tricky as it has always been – maybe more so, as audiences see more films than ever before through a variety of new media, and can form links with more and more other films. The availability of media to shoot on is offset by these things, and sadly, in a world where cliché springs up so quickly, films like Documenting The Grey Man suffer for simply adding to it.

Review by Keri O’Shea


 
Released by Camp Motion Pictures
Region 1 NTSC
Not Rated
Extras :
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