I finally watched “The Poughkeepsie Tapes.” And I say Booo! I’m not gonna dress this post up in some florid over-long introduction and frilly poetical conclusion just so I can puke up all over it after the dance. The movie is no good.

For those of you who don’t obsessively track the misadventures of distributionless horror movies: “The Poughkeepsie Tapes” is a 2007 serial killer flick, filmed documentary style, about a mass murderer in Poughkeepsie, New York, who videotaped his numerous hellacious homicides. Written, produced and directed by the Brothers Dowdle, the film kicked around the festival circuit, got bought by MGM, was scheduled for a tentative, ultimately cancelled, 2009 theatrical release, and then just sort of faded away. (You can dig it up online in all of the places you’re already thinking to check.)

Dance time.

AFTER THE JUMP…
The movie cuts between two different formats – talking head-style interviews with cops, FBI agents, members of the victim’s families, etc., and grainy footage from the titular video cassettes made by the killer.

As for the interviews, even the ones that aren’t poorly acted feel overly scripted, making the characters about as believable as the sultry, coifed astrophysicist of every-action-movie fame. I know. The problem with my critique, at least in terms of the “overly scripted” allegation, is that it hinges on the essential notion that the filmmakers’ goal was either to fool the viewer into watching the film as an actual journalistic document, or to deconstruct the broader nature of documentary film via seamless facsimile. “The Poughkeepsie Tapes,” however, seems happy to use “documentary” as a broad structural guide to aid in crafting a budget-conscious, requisitely twisty Hollywood serial killer romp.

So, fine, I can’t rightfully bitch about the part where an FBI film analyst tells a story about how his wife saw a half-hour of one tape and was so traumatized that she wouldn’t let him touch her for a year. But my acting gripe stands. Even if the performer doesn’t have to convince me that he’s an actual FBI forensic technician in real life, he at least has to be a convincing FBI forensic technician in the film’s internal reality. And that shouldn’t be too hard… it’s a reality where a murderer amasses hundreds upon hundreds of videotapes detailing his crimes, and none of the police ever think to hit up local electronic stores for security footage that might reveal one creepy dude, perhaps even with a camera (I mean f***, the guy seems to record everything else he does) consistently purchasing blank tapes.

That’s another thing – ignoring all the procedural gaffs committed by the police and g-men who the killer manages to outsmart at every turn, the killer’s procedures are ludicrous. He constantly switches up his murder weapons, his victim profiles and his body disposal methods. He holds one random victim hostage for years, but kills everyone else. From quick and easy to horrifically slow and muffled by animal feces, this guy does it all. To the cops in the film, this unpredictable versatility makes him the most brilliant serial killer ever in the entire history of wild, blood-drenched maniacs. Every character goes on ad nauseam about how smart and savvy he is, and each promising forensic lead gives way to another complex and nefarious psyche out orchestrated by a man who we’re meant to believe is sadistic, emotionally disturbed, misogynistic, bloodthirsty, violent… and somehow also completely capable and sane. Again, one could argue that the movie is no less realistic than a movie like “Se7en,” and that I’m allowing the film’s superficial usage of documentary techniques to cloud my assessment – which is true – but maybe that points to a larger truth. Maybe documentary – a style deeply immersed in the notion of authenticity or the subversion thereof – wasn’t the most efficient medium through which to narrate this boilerplate cat-and-mouse gore thriller.

The early introduction of the tapes into the film isn’t bad. Short clips are shown in the context of expert commentary and the testimony of victims’ acquaintances. We catch blurry glimpses of gruesome dismemberments and see a few longer sequences in which the killer captures victims, all the while letting the camera roll. As the film moves on, though, the talking head testimonies and tape commentaries become sparser, and long segments of tape are just allowed to roll, uninterrupted. The masked killer takes his aforementioned hostage. We watch as he dominates and abuses her. More bodies pile up. Plot twists get increasingly nutty. Soon, it almost feels as if the filmmakers settled on the documentary style as a compromise after realizing the infeasibility of shooting an entire killer-centric first-person, Blair Witch-style venture without finding some way to show things from the perspective of the law enforcement officers who their brilliant antagonist is repeatedly punking (note that the Brothers Dowdle did, in fact, go on to make a first-person POV horror film – “Quarantine,” the inferior American remake of the brilliant Spanish movie, “[REC]”).
In the end, the worst use of the “found footage” also offers one of the film’s most uniquely creepy images: a terrified, lingerie-clad woman being ordered from off camera to inflate and bounce atop a giant balloon. The scene escalates into a twisted nightmare of Lynchian proportions as the still-off-camera killer begins screaming “Now pop it! Pop it!” Out of context, it’s a fittingly creepy scene, but in the film, it’s squandered. The FBI video analyst explains that there’s over 100 hours of weird balloon footage, but we’re only shown the single minute-long sequence before the movie lopes away into familiar hack-and-slash territory. Balloons are never mentioned again.

Cinematical’s review of “The Poughkeepsie Tapes” briefly suggests that, through the footage, which represents the killer’s own voyeuristic fetishization of his murders, the film engages viewers to consider their own voyeuristic fascination with violent cinematic imagery. And maybe for some folks it does. Me? I just wondered why even America’s independent horror directors are content to recycle the same violent imagery, repackaged though it might be.

BARF!

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