Dir - Ricky Umberger
Overall: MEH
For the third installment in his micro-budgeted found footage series, filmmaker Ricky Umberger continues to expand his own mythology with a mix of enduring and embarrassing results. The Fear Footage: 3 AM is more aligned with its immediate predecessor The Fear Footage 2: Electric Boogaloo than the initial entry in the series, going meta again, this time with a southern bro YouTuber who investigates everything that came before while of course finding himself trapped in the Twilight Zone from hell loop that has become the norm. Umberger has consistently merited each of these releases on a strong premise, so it is no surprise that the first act is again the most interesting and well-executed. It takes ages for our lone protagonist to interact with another person, (actor's name unknown since none of these movies list any credits or have any conventional promotional material, which in and of itself is refreshing and unique), and his examining of the now abandoned town of Darkbluff, Maryland is wonderfully chilling. Things eventually amp up as they are wont to do and sadly, Umberger still thinks that is it creepy to have his actors talk in cringe-worthy "scary" voices while wearing dollar store Halloween costumes, (also, lots and lots of jump scares again), but even with the arbitrary spookiness being more silly than terrifying, this is easily the most agreeable movie in the lot.
Dir - Michael Morrissey
Overall: MEH
Eleven years after his directorial debut Boy Wonder, filmmaker Michael Morrissey taps into psychological thriller terrain with The Girl Who Got Away, but the results are undermined by some unintentionally absurd moments. On the plus side, the movie's foibles do not occur until the third act, which tries to deliver on an impending mystery and a relentlessly dour mood surrounding a grown woman who has structured her life around survivor's guilt after being the lone "girl who got away" from a female serial killer at an early age. The details pile up as things progress, intriguingly at first, but Morrissey cannot help himself in laying on twists and turns that both confuse the plot and suck the life out of it. Things become a mixed bag in the process, with some embarrassing line readings, implausible shocks stemming around characters briefly living through brutal stab wounds, a goddamn shotgun blast to the face, and even a fetus being taken out of a pregnant woman, weak dialog, jump scares, CGI gore, and a hackneyed protagonist revelation where she overcomes her life-long trauma by the bloody conclusion. The film has too mush sincerity to outright dismiss, but it still comes close to being a cringe-worthy disaster.
Dir - Rueben Martell
Overall: MEH
A noble story that focuses on the long-endured hardships of indigenous communities with much of its cast giving solid performances, director/co-writer Rueben Martell's full-length debut Don't Say Its Name falls victim to humdrum genre tactics and an unintentionally silly supernatural presence. Shot in a particularly blistering Alberta, Canada, various townsfolk start getting picked off by an invisible assailant that is accompanied by a putrid smell that only its victims can detect mere moments before getting brutally slashed up. Racism, local politics, war trauma, and the unfortunately all-too-common reality of corporations inching in ever further on Native American's land all play apart in fleshing-out a plot that has its heart in the right place, further enhanced by a number of also Native actors who wear their people's trials and tribulations on their face and every utterance. It is a shame then that the antagonist entity is portrayed the way that is is. In its mysterious and unseen form, it causes CGI blood splatter to appear in a laughable manner, and when it does finally become flesh and blood for reasons that are not explained, it looks like a corpse-painted reject from a teenage black metal band. There are such few horror elements to begin with that this would have benefited from their elimination altogether, which would have made its sincere attempt at shining more light on a still prominent problem that much more compelling.
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