Editorials
Stay Home, Watch Horror: 5 Found Footage Nightmares to Stream this Week
Found footage gets a bad rap. After the sleeper success of The Blair Witch Project, which proved just how profitable a micro-budgeted horror film shot in this style could be, the genre became inundated with found footage films. That influx caused massive burnout among fans, but more importantly, it demonstrated that creating a found footage film isn’t as easy as it looks. Avoiding the pitfalls of predictability while justifying the camera’s constant use is a tricky tightrope walk, but creating an unsettling atmosphere and effective scares can go a long way in showing there’s still plenty of horrors left to be mined from the subgenre.
Point being, there are still plenty of terrifying and innovative films in the subgenre worth seeking out.
This week’s streaming picks are dedicated to some of the best goosebumps-inducing entries in found footage. These five movies test the boundaries of their format and deliver nail-biting tension and creative scares…
Afflicted – Prime Video
Best friends Derek and Clif, played by writers/directors Derek Lee and Clif Prowse, embark on an epic trip around the world. They intend to document their journey every step of the way and upload their footage to an ongoing blog. Derek’s health tempers their excitement; he has a brain aneurysm that could rupture at any moment. The adventure is thrown another curveball when a one-night stand in Paris leaves Derek unconscious and bloodied. When he wakes, Derek’s body undergoes horrifying new changes that see Clif desperate to save his friend. While much of the subgenre is dedicated to demonic possession and ghosts, Afflicted gives a refreshing update to a different foundational movie monster. Moreover, it does it with suspense and action-horror style.
Lake Mungo – Tubi
Using a faux-documentary setup, Lake Mungo follows a family still reeling over the unexpected drowning of the eldest daughter. Soon after, strange things start happening around the home that prompts the surviving family members to investigate the details that led up to her death. The scares come subtle, often lurking in the background for only the most observant to notice. Who Alice Palmer was before her passing makes for the most fascinating aspect of this unique horror movie, a slow-burn mystery full of twists and one seriously unnerving jump scare for the ages.
Final Prayer – Tubi
Also known as The Borderlands, Final Prayer follows a paranormal team sent by the Vatican to investigate strange phenomena plaguing a Catholic church in the remote countryside. That setup sounds overly familiar, and it is, which works in the film’s favor. Hostile villagers, blasphemous Pagan rituals, haunted activity, and even a suspicious religious lead character all make for the typical trademarks of a found footage horror movie. Including that it appears that it’s building its way toward an exorcism. Where it goes from there is far beyond the realm of predictability, though—Final Prayer parts on a grim note, with one of the boldest, most disturbing final acts.
Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum – Prime Video
Amateur ghosthunters in over their heads is a plot description that could be applied to any number of found footage movies, let alone horror in general. If you’re going this route, you’d better find an innovative way to set it apart from the rest, or at least ensure the scares are plenty. Gonjiam nails it. In this Korean film, the crew of a horror web show plans a live stream event in one of the country’s most infamous abandoned hospitals. The host has rigged fake scares to spook his crew for the sake of ratings, but they prove unnecessary thanks to the sinister forces haunting the place. While this movie doesn’t reinvent the wheel, it makes up for that with unrelenting terror. Turn the lights down low and prepare to get creeped out.
[Rec] 2 – Crackle
Few horror sequels manage to live up to the success of their predecessors, and even fewer surpass them. [Rec] 2 makes maintaining the breathless energy and chills of [Rec] look easy. Overlapping with the events of the first film, the sequel follows a medical officer accompanied by a SWAT team into the quarantined apartment building. Concurrently, a group of outsiders also make their way into the building, creating a whole slew of new characters forced to contend with the infected residents. The scares are almost nonstop, and the tension leaves you on the edge of your seat. Above all, this sequel expands the mythology in extremely smart ways. [Rec] 2 isn’t so much a sequel as it a continuation. If you need to catch up on [Rec], both films are available to stream on Crackle.
The problem with filming sequels back-to-back is that, unless you can afford expensive reshoots, there’s no easy way to adjust course in between movies if fans react badly to where the story is headed. That’s why it’s important to have a complete narrative thought out well in advance lest you accidentally kill a budding franchise.
However, this isn’t always the case. Every once in a while, it seems like the cinema gods smile upon certain chaotic productions and gift moviegoers with complete franchises that feel like more than the sum of their hastily produced parts. Ted Nicolaou’s Bloodlust: Subspecies III is precisely one of these miraculous pictures, with the raw talents of the artists involved (as well as the continued support from Romania) turning the feature into an effective conclusion for a series that kind of made things up as the filmmakers went along.
That’s why I’d like to invite my fellow readers to join me on this third part of our journey through the Subspecies franchise as we look into Bloodlust and talk about how it remains a surprisingly satisfying finale to the original trilogy.
A Trilogy Planned on the Fly
Released only a year after Bloodstone found plenty of success in rental stores and mail-in VHS catalogues worldwide, 1994’s Bloodlust was produced at the same time as its predecessor in (mostly) the same locations and with the same team. This means that the movie benefited from all the same upgrades as Bloodstone, with the crew now being more experienced with the ins and outs of surviving a low-budget Romanian production and the cast really settling into their characters.
At this point, everything from location scouting to the makeup process had been streamlined, with Wayne Toth and Norman Cabrera, the main duo behind special effects, even switching out time-consuming prosthetics for latex gloves in order to speed up Anders Hove’s monstrous transformation. The titular “subspecies” demons were also once again relegated to a mere cameo appearance due to the laborious puppetry required to bring them to life.
The only real hiccup came from the fact that actress Denice Duff had replaced the first film’s Michelle (Laura Mae Tate) and was immediately expected to portray the character as both an innocent victim in part II and as a secondary villain in part III. According to behind-the-scenes interviews, the hectic production schedule that blended two different movies meant that Duff would often find herself having to alternate between two incredibly different versions of Michelle during the same shooting day – though it’s obvious that she’s having more fun with Bloodlust’s more traditionally vampiric version of her character.
In the finished film, we pick things up immediately where the previous entry left off as Rebecca (Melanie Shatner) is forced to leave her vampire sister Michelle (Duff) behind in the dungeons of Castle Vladislav due to the rising sun. This allows Mummy (Pamela Gordon) to use Michelle’s blood to revive the vicious Radu (Hove) so that he may continue his quest for the coveted Bloodstone – a magical artifact that perpetually drips the Blood of Saints.
Meanwhile, the dreamy US embassy agent Mel (Kevin Blair) agrees to help Rebecca plan a rescue mission, though they’re unaware that Radu has become infatuated with Michelle during his attempts to guide her growing bloodlust. This all culminates in a climactic confrontation meant to tie up all of the series’ loose ends in one of Full Moon Pictures’ most ambitious productions.
The Evolution of Radu
Like its predecessor, Bloodlust: Subspecies III was also warmly received by fans who argued that the series was an even bigger success than Full Moon’s other major horror franchise, Puppet Master. This praise wasn’t unanimous, however, as 1994 had seen the rise of a more modern breed of sexy vampire popularized by Anne Rice, with old-school Nosferatu like Radu being viewed as obsolete when compared to the likes of Lestat and Gary Oldman’s take on Dracula.
In a way, one might argue that Nicolaou’s film is something of a swan song for the classic vampire story, as Bloodlust combines all of the traditional elements we tend to associate with these tales into a single tragic yarn that ties a neat little bow on Radu’s story as well as the old-fashioned monster movies that he represents. The finale remains shocking despite the fact that this is the third time we see Radu get brutally killed onscreen, with the brief tease that he may one day return feeling more like a nod towards the nature of evil rather than sequel bait.
The film dabbles a bit in gothic romance and even explores the inherent power fantasy behind transforming into an immortal creature of the night, but the filmmakers never lose sight of Radu as a demonic force even when he’s willing to betray his beloved Mummy for Michelle’s sake. In fact, his twisted “love” for his fledgling makes him even creepier as we get the feeling that his passion comes from a dark and disturbing place.
Anders Hove is at his absolute best in this film, with the effects department boosting his moments of what the younger generation would call “aura farming” whenever Radu emerges from shadows like a 90s version of Count Orlok. There are even a couple of surprisingly effective jump-scares here, which is why I’d argue that Bloodlust cements Radu as one of the most memorable cinematic vampires of all time despite his humble origins.
Subspecies Saves Its Best For Last
Nicolaou and Vlad Panescu also saved the best for “last” (more on that in a bit) regarding the film’s visuals, with the cinematography and overall atmosphere of Bloodlust absolutely surpassing what we saw in the previous films. Everything feels appropriately climactic this time around (including the wonderful soundtrack that was co-composed alongside an authentic Romanian orchestra), and I appreciate how this is the fastest-paced entry in the trilogy since the film doesn’t need to waste time setting anything up.
Bloodlust still suffers from some of the same low-budget blemishes as its predecessors, but there’s so much creative passion here that no amount of wonky effects work or stilted dialogue can get in the way of appreciating the flick’s gothic grandeur. That’s why it’s not surprising that the movie’s definitive(-ish) ending would later be retconned as fans begged for more Radu.
Of course, the next entry in this series would be a different kind of vampiric endeavor altogether, with the filmmakers attempting to engage with the same trends that ultimately killed Radu and his antiquated kin. That, however, is a story for another time. For now, I’ll merely insist that Bloodlust: Subspecies III remains a highlight of Full Moon’s expansive catalogue and is definitely worth seeking out today.
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