South African offering Wesens (2020) is one of the more thoughtful found footage features in recent memory, focusing on the single-day investigation by four intelligence agents of a mysterious, unidentified object that fell from the sky onto remote farmland. Morné Visser plays the businesslike, skeptical head of the foursome; Pietie Beyers portrays a more open-minded character who becomes mesmerized by the dark, egg-shaped object; and Conradie van Heerden and Randy Januarie round out the group as assistants. As the men record their findings on what seems to be Super 8mm and 16mm film, the object begins to have weird, and possibly dangerous effects, on them. Wesens is wonderfully shot by cinematographer Tom Purcell, who thankfully avoids much of the shaky-cam trappings of the found-footage subgenre. Writer/director Derick Muller invests his science fiction film with elements of folk horror and psychological horror, and with the aid of his crackerjack cast members, serves up a thought-provoking film that addresses historical and political issues in that country.
Canada-set U.S. production Curse of Aurore (2020) is a found-footage horror film that finds a trio of American filmmaker friends — Lena (Llana Barron, who cowrote the screenplay with director/editor Mehran C. Torgoley), Aaron (Lex Wilson), and Kevin (Jordan Kaplan) — poking their noses around rural Quebec and upsetting the locals when the latter folks catch wind of their project: a horror movie based on the real-life tale of Aurore Gagnon, who died as a result of child abuse at the age of 10 in 1920 and who is a highly important historical figure in that province and throughout Canada. Seasoned fright-fare fans can pretty much guess the fate of the three filmmakers when upset locals are involved, especially when some of them are seen early on holding late-night candlelight secret meetings. The three leads also double as Curse of Aurore’s camera operators, and a good deal of the film involves the dreaded-by-yours-truly shaky-cam approach. Barron, Wilson, and Kaplan give solid performances and though their characters have arguments on occasion, they avoid the pitfall of having unlikeable characters. There isn’t much new here that fright-fare fans won’t have seen before, but overall the film is a highly watchable entry in the found-footage subgenre.
Wesens and Curse of Aurore screened as part of Unnamed Footage Festival, which took place March 17–20, 2022 in San Francisco, California.
