Format: DVD from Earlville Public Library through interlibrary loan on gigantic television.
I am not generally a huge fan of found footage movies, although there are certainly those that have been done well. [REC] and Noroi are great examples of what can be done with the style. The problem I tend to have with the style is that it often comes across as lazy. It’s an interesting way to tell a story, but it also easily breaks the fourth wall by being edited. I tend to go into found footage wary, and I don’t always love finding out that the movie I’ve signed up to watch is done in this style. So I wasn’t really pleased to learn that Afflicted is going to be a lot of shaky cam, shots that don’t really show us anything, and editing in something that by definition shouldn’t be edited.
I should also say off the top here that Afflicted dives into a very different subgenre of horror. Yes, it’s found footage, but this is going to go in a different direction than most. It’s actually the most similar to Chronicle in a lot of respects. That said, I don’t want to completely spoil the surprise of where this goes, so I’m going to put a spoiler tag here—this will contain spoilers. I’ll keep them toward the end as much as I can, but if you haven’t seen this and don’t want the movie spoiled, you should stop reading here.
One of the more interesting conceits of the film is that our two main characters, Derek and Clif, are going to use their names as the names of the characters. Derek Lee and Clif Prowse wrote and directed this film, starring Derek and Clif as themselves, more or less. As the film starts, we learn that the pair are about to start on a year-long trip around the world. We also learn that this is controversial because Derek has recently been diagnosed with a cerebral arteriovenous malformation. Essentially, he could have an aneurysm at any time and drop dead. He has decided that this is evidence that he needs to seize the day, and the trip proceeds as planned.
Their journey begins in Barcelona where they have arranged to meet their friends Edo and Zach (Edo Van Breeman and Zach Gray), whose band is performing there. While they are there, Derek hooks up with a woman named Audrey (Baya Rehaz). The other three, wanting to prank him, break into his room, hoping to find him in the act. What they find instead is Derek bleeding and partially conscious and Audrey gone. They believe they came in just as she was planning to rob him, and Derek and Clif leave Barcelona to continue their trip.
This is the point where, if you know your horror tropes, it’s going to become obvious what is happening. From this point forward, consider everything under a spoiler tag.
The pair make their way to Italy, and it soon becomes clear that something is very wrong with Derek. He can’t keep food down and at a vineyard has a terrible reaction to being out in the sun. Frustrated by what is happening, Derek punches through a stone wall. He also then demonstrates incredible speed and the ability to jump more than a full story and spider climb up the side of a building. Despite his claims that he is perfectly fine, Derek deteriorates because of his inability to eat.
You’ve figured it out, right? Derek has been infected with vampirism and the rest of the film is about him learning to come to terms with what this means.
As much as I don’t love found footage, I like the fact that this was really trying to do something different. This wasn’t about people finding themselves in a surprise situation where something is trying to kill them. It was something genuinely interesting. Most vampire movies give us a vampire who has been infected for a long time and a world where all of the established tropes of vampirism are established. That’s not the case here. Derek is in a new world, and while we might know where at least some of this is going, we’re on the same voyage of discovery that he is.
My issues are really with the found footage aspects of this. We get an explanation of the cameras early on—Clif is a filmmaker and planned on making a documentary of their whole trip when they returned home. But this doesn’t explain the editing. It doesn’t explain why, when Derek goes to confront Audrey, there’s a planted camera that just happens to be perfectly set up for the fight that happens. There’s no explanation for the during credits sequence.
Anyway, I don’t love the style, but I liked this despite the fact that it sneaks in its found footage-i-ness on the audience.
Why to watch Afflicted: If you’re going to do found footage, do something completely original—and this is close.
Why not to watch: Janky camera work. It is found footage, after all.
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