Now Showing: Footage from the Past

 

Footage from the Past

Genre: Mystery/Horror

Director: Eduardo Sanchez

Writer: Carl Flimmer

Cast: Chace Crawford, Corey Hawkins, Erin Moriarty, Andi Matichak, Emma Dumont, Elizabeth Lail, Celeste O'Connor, Julia Goldani Telles, Annalise Basso, Saxon Sharbino

Plot: The film begins in Haven, New Jersey in 1999. The McPherson family home had been put up for sale by the owners, who had called a company to remove everything the mansion contained, in order to make an inventory of the furniture and objects placed in the basement and in the attic, to decide what to keep and what to throw away or sell. Josh McPherson (Chace Crawford), while rummaging in the attic he found in an old box of biscuits a Super 8 film that did not belong to him and of which he did not know of its existence. There were no indications about it and she thought it might have belonged to her father, who died a few months earlier. So he decided to keep it and intrigued put it in a box that would bring in the new house.

The McPhersons managed to sell the house and moved to Florida and for almost a year the film was forgotten, left to accumulate dust inside the box in the garage. One day Josh's computer broke down and asked a colleague for help to get a new one. While the two talk over coffee, McPherson hinted at the strange find of many months earlier. His colleague, Zachary Moses (Corey Hawkins), was a fan of videos and cameras and explained to McPherson that, if he wished, he could try to make sure that the video on the film was projected. The two friends agreed and a few days later, McPherson took the mysterious movie to Moses' house, where the man possessed the necessary tools. The airing of the video was more difficult than expected due to some technical problems and the sub-optimal conditions of the video but in the end Zachary managed to sort things out. The two men, especially Josh, were quite excited and curious without knowing why. In the meantime it had gotten quite late and Josh called his wife to tell her he would be back late. Meanwhile Zachary ordered two pizzas. The two sat down with a beer in hand and the footage began. Meanwhile, outside the house, a strong thunderstorm began with lightning and thunder. The first ten minutes revealed nothing interesting: the camera belonged to a young and nice girl named Kate (Erin Moriarty) who enjoyed filming her dogs, her hamster or her parents during barbecues in the garden. Josh McPherson did not know those people, so he deduced that the video had not been shot by his father, but that it probably belonged to the previous owners of Haven's home, although the house that was seen in the filming was not that. From the images Josh and Zachary deduced that the shooting had been carried out in 1966, in fact, in a part of the video a calendar was framed in passing. After that the video changed the environment and moved to a building where a volleyball game was being played. When they saw this Josh and Zachary joked that at least they could taste their eyes with some beautiful girls. Kate was in the stands and was resuming some moments of the game but in the end the team she was cheering for lost. From her speeches it is clear that she was part of the team but that due to a knee injury she had not been able to participate in that game, which from her words seemed rather important for the ranking. Afterwards she went down to the locker room and when she opens the door there is a tense atmosphere between the girls and two of them, the team captain Jessica (Andi Matichak) and Cara (Emma Dumont) are fighting quite lively raising their voice due to words not very respectful of Sarah (Celeste O'Connor). Next to them is Natalie (Elizabeth Lail) who tries to calm them down without much success. At that point Kate detaches the footage. Then we move on to other fragmented images depicting some of the girls on the team who get into an orange van driven by Jessica to go on a trip to try and reassemble the group. In addition to Kate, Jessica, Cara, Sarah and Natalie there are also the blonde Jennifer (Saxon Sharbino) and Tracy (Annalise Basso) with thick glasses and a physics book in hand. Finally also the last girl, Hannah (Julia Goldani Telles) arrives, who presents herself with an unlikely pink hair that causes hilarity in all the girls present.

At this point the video started to be ruined and for a few minutes you could not see anything causing disappointment in the two boys because the video had been almost useless showing few interesting things. McPherson and Moses began to get bored, but here the video changed suddenly: the camera framed a dirt path flanked by tall fir trees, while on the other side there was a rushing river. The girl with the pink hair walked talking to Jennifer and ahead there were Jessica, Cara and Sarah who spoke animatedly even if it didn't seem like a quarrel as had happened after the game. At the end of the group, behind Kate there were Natalie and Tracy singing a song that neither Josh nor Zachary knew. It was clearly the filming of a picnic in a wood and it was also possible to identify the place, because the camera framed a rustic wooden sign on the side of the path where the words ROOTH WOOD had been recorded. From then on, the video lasted about an hour, without showing anything in particular: the girls who walked among the trees, some girls sunbathing near the river and who camped in a small clearing surrounded by fir trunks, planting curtains and throwing pine cones and water on themselves. The only thing vaguely far from the ordinary was the finding of two dead and devoured deer by some animal, perhaps a bear as Jessica suggested. The video was not continuous, but proceeded in ten-eleven minute segments. Finally Kate filmed all the girls who sat around the fire drinking and roasting marshmallows and other food. The camera also showed a photograph depicting all the smiling girls near the fire. The climate was calm and relaxed.

Just then something happened: one of the girls, Cara, turned to the woods and her expression was attentive. Soon, puzzled glances were also painted on the other campers. The camera winced, a sign that Kate had stood up, framing the trunks of trees on which the flames flashed. But beyond the range of fire the darkness was total. The shot returned to the group of girls, all standing, exchanging agitated sentences. Some had taken hands and in their eyes there was visible fear. Josh and Zachary were also starting to get restless because they couldn't understand what was going on. Jessica and Natalie entered the tent for a moment and came out with a flashlight, pointing it between the trunks. Getting nothing, Jessica decided to take a few steps, up to the trees, the camera behind him. In the beam of light appeared a face with sparkling eyes, like those of cats but much larger, but it was only for a few moments, as if something had peeked out from behind a bush. The shot got confused but when it stabilized, the fire, curtains and backpacks could be seen from a couple of meters away, as if the girls had suddenly moved away, frightened by something and that now they were standing at the edge of the clearing. The shot wobbled and for about ten, fifteen seconds there was nothing but fire dancing in the circle of stones, with the girls at the edges of the physical field, clearly frightened. Zachary blocked the images for a few moments, pointing out to Josh that someone was missing in the images, in fact Jennifer seemed to have disappeared. The images started again and a moment later the girls noticed Jennifer's absence and some started calling her. A moment later the girls also notice Tracy's absence. The girls continue to look at each other in terror, not knowing what to do. Then they start heading to where their belongings are to pick up their backpacks and try to escape from there. During the race you can see a few seconds of images in which Hannah is dropped on the ground and is taken by the ankles by two hands and pulled in the middle of the darkness while the girl tries to cling to the ground. As the survivors collect their belongings quickly, Jessica takes the keys to her van that were in her backpack. Suddenly a noise around them. Kate's camera turns around and Sarah is seen with a deep neck injury. The girl clasps her hands around her neck trying to dab the wound but it is too deep and in a few moments she falls agonizingly to the ground. Then for a few minutes' Josh and Zachary can't see much because the images are very damaged.Suddenly the video started again. The girls remained three. Kate, Jessica and Cara who had clothes and face covered in blood. Josh noticed a big wound that went down to his cheek from his head. The three seemed to have hidden in a kind of wooden hut for hunters in the woods. Cara tore off a piece of her shirt and wiped the blood from her face while it sent pain and anxiety from her face. The door is locked with what they had available. Jessica asks Kate why she turned the camera back on and the girl replies because she wants to make it clear who will find out what happened, if the three of them die too. Then the three greeted his family with a short message until they began to raise their heads towards the wooden ceiling, something was banging. The wooden planks were about to collapse and Jessica started looking for weapons in the shed but found only a rusty knife and said that when that monster entered she would try to keep it there long enough to make her run away. Kate and Cara grudgingly accepted. Moments later there was great confusion that Josh and Zachary did not quite understand. Probably the beast had entered and Jessica had stayed there to fight and die while the other two friends ran away. Kate was running in the woods with Cara beside her until Cara falls to the ground hit by some rudimentary weapon thrown by the monster. The images then pass some time later. Kate frames her face and says that she has been walking for a few hours without knowing where she is but that perhaps she sowed the creature because she hadn't seen her presence for quite a while. She said that she had followed the river and at some point was able to see the exit of the forest in the distance thanks to the faint lights of dawn that were coming. Shortly thereafter she arrived there and there was a kind of gate and a little further on a signpost indicating the name of a place called Hollow Creek. The girl approached to climb over the gate when the creature appeared, which had jumped down from a tree behind her. A moment later the footage ends.

Josh and Zachary were speechless at what they had seen. The two started looking for information on those facts. 

During the credits: Encouraged by the mystery of the film, McPherson managed to track down the old owners of his Haven home after a few weeks and got to know Philip Dermot, who lived in New Jersey and was the son of police sergeant Eric Dermot, who died two years earlier. . Dermot told McPherson that the Rooth Wood video had been the only evidence for a terrible multi-murder case in the mid-1960s in the woods of Rooth Wood. Some rangers had found the lifeless bodies of some girls between the ages of twenty and twenty-seven, all excruciatingly torn apart and devoid of any internal organs. Dermot, who was twenty-one at the time, said he saw the video when his father, obsessed with that story, decided to take it home to inspect it better, even when everyone had preferred to believe that the boys had simply been victims of the attack of a bear, although they haven't seen them in that area for years. Afterward, the Dermot family had moved elsewhere and the film had remained there.