Summer travels to Tulsa, Oklahoma, for the wedding of a college friend. Boyfriend Chris can’t make it, but she keeps in contact with him via FaceTime. After the wedding, Summer and her two friends Vicky and Eva head back to the AirBnB they’ve rented for the weekend, unaware that their presence in the house has unleashed the ghosts of a family who were killed there during the Tulsa race massacre in 1921. Now, those ghosts are looking for justice…
GRIMMFEST SAYS: A deft updating of the classic haunted house scenario for the age of social (multi)media, Alex Harron’s whip-smart movie combines handheld (supposedly) mobile-phone-shot found footage with jolting, jump-scare J-Horror imagery, corner of the eye creepiness, and an intelligent use of shadow, space, and shifts in camera focus that recalls such genre classics as Robert Wise’s classic THE HAUNTING, to create an immersive and constantly unnerving environment for the young protagonists. The idea of framing parts of the narrative as a series of smartphone video calls between the female lead and her boyfriend back home offers a smart reinvention of the standard found footage set up, allowing for a character outside of the situation to offer perspective, do research, etc., as well as explaining away the biggest hole in the logic of any “found footage” film – why are they still filming this? Sharply played, with deft and credible characterisation and a truly spectacular location, this offers old school chills, a lucid examination and confrontation of past social and political ills, and, almost as an afterthought, a wryly amusing exploration of relationships and communication in the modern world.