They’re Watching, says this found-footage horror movie, but you shouldn’t
Only a handful of found-footage horror movies in the past few years have connected with either audiences or critics, to the point where those few genuine successes have represented some degree of experimentation, like last year’s M. Night Shyamalan-orchestrated The Visit or the desktop-based Unfriended. But less inventive found-footage horror movies still get churned out on a regular basis, and rather than having the intended effect of increasing the naturalism and immediacy of the genre, they now mostly ensure that if a horror movie’s protagonists aren’t a family besieged by ghosts, they’re a camera crew rocking some degree of filmmaker’s arrogance. It makes sense that budding filmmakers would be drawn to these metatextual movies about the real-time making of horror movies. It also makes sense that plenty of people watching those movies could not care less about these characters or what happens to them.
They’re Watching at least attempts to incorporate filmmaking into its story more organically than some other found-footage pictures, though that also means it must chronicle the adventures of a bunch of callow camerapeople. After a quick introduction in the midst of typical climactic horror mayhem, the movie cuts straight into an episode of Home Hunters Global, an obvious (if not especially eagle-eyed) riff on the actual television program House Hunters International, complete with brightly colored graphics, bite-sized talking-head interviews, and an awkwardly inserted reference to the site of a witch burning for some clumsy portent. The show’s subject is Becky (Brigid Brannagh), who plans to renovate a rundown building in remote Pavlovka (treated as a generic Eastern European location, though it is the name of a real place in Russia).
