Butterfly Kisses (2018)

October 2, 2022 12:22 AM

A filmmaker discovers a box of video tapes depicting two students' disturbing film project featuring a local horror legend, The Peeping Tom. As he sets out to prove this story is real and release it as a work of his own, he loses himself and the film crew following him into his project.

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posted by forbiddencabinet (3 comments total)

This was an interesting and very genre-aware spin on found footage horror. That it has Eduardo Sánchez in this as himself as an expert being interviewed about found footage is really fun. The way it nested narratives was also a pretty great idea.

Seems to have taken a lot of inspiration from creepypasta stories. Recommended for fans of that style of horror or folks that enjoy found footage. My main gripes with it are the lazy jumpscares that ruin the mood and an ending that would have been better served by being more mysterious and 4th wall breaking.
posted by forbiddencabinet at 12:38 AM on October 2, 2022

This was great, much more well-written and interesting than I was expecting it to be, though I have to admit I'm a sucker for a "movie within a movie within a movie" premise. I agree it didn't totally stick the landing, and actually I thought the actual horror bits were kind of the least interesting parts of the movie. Still, I thought it was kind of thematically unified by how the obsession sort of got passed from subject to documentarian every ten years.
posted by whir at 12:17 PM on February 6 [1 favorite]

I really enjoyed this. It reminded me of the movie The Nobodies, which is another found footage movie within a movie. Both films really show how hard movie making is, and the toll of believing in something when no one else does. I enjoy horror that is used to explore other issues like documentary ethics and the cost of pursuing an artistic vision.
posted by miss-lapin at 6:29 PM on February 7