Checking up details for films in the final line-up of the Soho Horror Film Festival, I was intrigued to see this was by the lesser-known co-director of a landmark 1999 Found Footage Horror, leading to me witnessing the skyfall.
View on the film:
Whilst his fellow co-director of The Blair Witch Project (1999) Eduardo Sanchez has remained a highly visible figure in the Horror genre,directing a number of TV episodes,and films such as Exists (2014-also reviewed), writer/director Daniel Myrick returns to feature films, with an excellent, thoughtful expansion of the Found Footage stylisation he had first recorded with the Blair Witch.
Flying the camera into real life UFO conventions where Merryweather meets other believers in aliens, Myrick displays a sharp eye for up-close,personal drama, with fake documentary (not Found Footage) fluid hand-held camera moves resting on wide-shots of Carl talking to his sister and pal, which Myrick presents in his stilted camera moves,as if a documentary crew is capturing an intimate, personal moment of their subject.
Backed by an eerie score from Don Miggs & Smashing Pumpkins Billy Corgan, Myrick wonderfully slices off any hint of Horror with an excellent use of drone footage across the rural wilderness Merryweather is staying in on his birthday, which along with casting across the screen the outer space Merryweather is gazing into, also beautifully slots in with the melancholy final shot.
Believing he had a close encounter when he was ten years old,and that the aliens will be returning decades later on his upcoming birthday, the screenplay by Myrick takes an outstanding grounded approach in the character study of Merryweather, (played with empathetic sincerity by Michael Selle in his first feature film role.)
Refreshingly Myrick never belittles Merryweather for his beliefs,instead using excellent, well-written dialogue between Merryweather and his friend and sister that examines how alienated they each feel from society, as Myrick unleashes an emotionally-charged ending,when Merryweather sees the spirit in the sky.
View on the film:
Whilst his fellow co-director of The Blair Witch Project (1999) Eduardo Sanchez has remained a highly visible figure in the Horror genre,directing a number of TV episodes,and films such as Exists (2014-also reviewed), writer/director Daniel Myrick returns to feature films, with an excellent, thoughtful expansion of the Found Footage stylisation he had first recorded with the Blair Witch.
Flying the camera into real life UFO conventions where Merryweather meets other believers in aliens, Myrick displays a sharp eye for up-close,personal drama, with fake documentary (not Found Footage) fluid hand-held camera moves resting on wide-shots of Carl talking to his sister and pal, which Myrick presents in his stilted camera moves,as if a documentary crew is capturing an intimate, personal moment of their subject.
Backed by an eerie score from Don Miggs & Smashing Pumpkins Billy Corgan, Myrick wonderfully slices off any hint of Horror with an excellent use of drone footage across the rural wilderness Merryweather is staying in on his birthday, which along with casting across the screen the outer space Merryweather is gazing into, also beautifully slots in with the melancholy final shot.
Believing he had a close encounter when he was ten years old,and that the aliens will be returning decades later on his upcoming birthday, the screenplay by Myrick takes an outstanding grounded approach in the character study of Merryweather, (played with empathetic sincerity by Michael Selle in his first feature film role.)
Refreshingly Myrick never belittles Merryweather for his beliefs,instead using excellent, well-written dialogue between Merryweather and his friend and sister that examines how alienated they each feel from society, as Myrick unleashes an emotionally-charged ending,when Merryweather sees the spirit in the sky.