When doing Frightening Friday reviews, there’s always a danger that I’ll come across something too disturbing even for me, who generally finds cinematic horror to be a relief compared to real-world news. The fauxumentary “The Poughkeepsie Tapes” (2007, but widely released in 2014) comes close to crossing that line. If there were a way to shower one’s brain, I’d do that after watching this film.
Despite the stunning seven-year-gap between its copyright and its commercial release, the low-budget “Poughkeepsie” has quite a professional pedigree when you examine the credits. Writer-director John Erick Dowdle, thanks to the positive reputation of this film on the festival rounds, was hired for two more found-footage films: “Quarantine” (2008) and “As Above, So Below” (2014). And he helmed the underappreciated “Devil” (2010), from an M. Night Shyamalan story.
The film itself aims for a professional pedigree in its documentary framing mechanism, but conversely aims for amateur handheld style in the snuff-film clips. They come from a serial killer in Pennsylvania and New York in the 1990s who videotapes his own crimes, and who purposely leaves the tapes to be found.
“The Poughkeepsie Tapes” (2007)
Director: John Erick Dowdle
Writers: Drew Dowdle, John Erick Dowdle
Stars: Stacy Chbosky, Ben Messmer, Samantha Robson
A sympathetic victim
In the former case, we get an odd mix of good and bad acting – plus a rarity for this genre: actors you might recognize. Ivar Brogger is most recognizable to me; he plays the main talking head, a law-enforcement veteran who is an expert on the Water Street Butcher.
In the found footage, Stacy Chbosky is so good as Cheryl Dempsey, the main kidnapping victim who we regularly return to, that an interesting case can be made. Even if a movie has numerous examples of poor acting, and even some of the details border on comedically unlikely, if a central character makes an emotional connection with a viewer, that’s all that matters.
“Poughkeepsie” hits on various brands of horror: the traditional scares wherein a viewer knows a killer lurks but the soon-to-be victims do not; physical torture; and one instance of a creep-out visual, utilizing the killer’s Black Plague mask and contortionism. But most of all: psychological horror.
The movie makes a case that in addition to physical mutilation, there’s such a thing as psychological mutilation. As much as Dowdle comes up with horrifically creative things for the killer to do to the human body, the Stockholm Syndrome effects on Cheryl are more chilling; “Poughkeepsie” makes 2015’s “Room” look like a vacation.
Dowdle wraps up the fauxumentary in expert fashion with one last key interview, and one last piece of information – suggesting something even more horrific (amazingly) — for us to mull over.
An underexplored thread
Keeping “Poughkeepsie” from higher marks is a key stretch chronicling the killer’s capture and processing through the legal system. It comes at us fast and furious, and skims over crucial information.
Ideally, this segment would illustrate the next-level brilliance of the Water Street Butcher, but instead it makes me loathe the justice system for its idiocy while alternately thinking that this is next-level absurdity even by those standards. Veteran movie-watchers will get the cue that this is the narrative’s false climax.
That said, the overall gripping (despite its sliminess) nature of the case, combined with what happens to Cheryl, allows Dowdle to power through to additional levels of horror. This film has a lot of bad parts – both in terms of less-than-stellar artistic or technical craft, and in terms of being purposefully hard to watch.
But the saying that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” applies. Whether you’re into this brand of horror or not, whether you admire the finished product or not, “The Poughkeepsie Tapes” will leave an impression. Especially if you can make it to the end.