By Cameryn Barnett
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Like anything in Hollywood, the found footage genre needs to constantly evolve or risk feeling stale. Ever since The Blair Witch Project both tricked and terrified audiences with its innovative marketing campaign, the next generation of independent filmmakers have attempted to replicate the film's success with varying degrees of triumph. On one hand, movies like Josh Trank's Chronicle have excelled by combining found footage's gritty realism with the CGI-saturated superhero genre, while Cloverfield expanded on The Blair Witch Project's horror by combining its intimate perspective with the dispassionate destruction of a sci-fi monster film. However, fans searching for a more subversive installment in the underrated sub-genre should check out 2018's Butterfly Kisses, a largely overlooked horror film guaranteed to make you blink.
Directed by the late Erik Kristopher Myers, the film combines the supernatural elements of The Blair Witch Project with the documentary format of found-footage classics like Lake Mungo and the more recent Horror in the High Desert, delivering plenty of terror and thought-provoking fright throughout its 91-minute runtime. Although the lack of a broad theatrical release meant Butterfly Kisses didn't initially reach a wide audience, the film's premiere on streamers nonetheless garnered a small group of extremely positive reviews and a 100% Critics' Score on Rotten Tomatoes, solidifying Myers' movie as a hidden gem which deserves more attention.
What Is ‘Butterfly Kisses’ About?
The film kicks off with a classic horror premise. After an unsettling opening scene in which film student Sophia Crane (Rach Armiger) records the first half of her final confession in 2004, down-on-his-luck filmmaker Gavin York (Seth Adam Kallick) discovers a shoebox filled with Crane's old videotapes in the present. Interviews with York and the first of these tapes reveal that Crane and her film partner, Feldman (Reed DeLisle), were trying to collect evidence of a local specter called Peeping Tom for their college dissertation, and the film very quickly establishes the lore behind its daunting urban legend. According to locals, Peeping Tom can only be seen if someone stares down the end of Ellicott City's Ilchester Tunnel for a full hour from midnight until 1 a.m., after which Peeping Tom will inch closer to that person every time they blink.
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The film derives its title from this legend, as Peeping Tom is said to give his victims a 'butterfly kiss' when he gets so close his long eyelashes force them to blink one last time, and Butterfly Kisses deserves full credit for bringing its fictional phantom to life. Myers, in particular, has stated that he combined the appearance of a Slenderman-esque creature with the ritualistic summoning associated with entities like Bloody Mary to produce a monster both refreshing and familiar. The film also uses interviews with locals to establish the kind of believability that's crucial to the best-found footage films worldwide. In fact, the film's rendering of its invention proved so convincing that a local news station even ran a story on Ellicott City's Peeping Tom, illustrating the power of the mythology that unfolds in Myers' film.
Aside from the movie's ocular stalker, part of what makes Butterfly Kisses so enthralling is the intricacy of the film’s plot. In all, there are actually three found footage films contained within Myers’ movie, each of them more self-aware than the last. As Sophia and Feldman attempt to gather proof of Peeping Tom by performing the ritual with their camera, the pressure to prove he didn't fabricate his discovery of the tapes is placed on Gavin, who himself has hired Myers' crew to document his own efforts to turn Sophia's project into his own movie. This framing device lends Butterfly Kisses a meta-perspective unique to its genre, as the horror of the film's urban legend is contrasted by Gavin's increasingly obsessive effort to make his own found footage film in a commentary on the self-destructive allure of Hollywood fame.
The ethics of Gavin's mission, the credibility of Sophia and Feldman, and the truth behind Peeping Tom are all called into question as Butterfly Kisses slowly reveals the uncomfortable realities behind its main characters' lives, using the details of Gavin's marriage and Sophia's past projects to keep audiences guessing until the film's shocking conclusion. Thankfully, beginners to the found footage genre don't have much to fear from the film, as it relies primarily on predictable jump scares to keep your blood flowing, but the movie's skin-crawling sound design and grainy aesthetic still give the film a chilling atmosphere. Fans looking for terror akin to Paranormal Activity may be disappointed by the dramatic focus afforded to Gavin in the film's second half, but this plotline ultimately allows Butterfly Kisses to blur the lines between reality and fiction further by dissecting the relationship between directors and the footage that they choose to find.
Butterfly Kisses (2018)
Not Rated
Horror
Mystery
Drama
In Butterfly Kisses, a filmmaker stumbles upon footage of two students' unsettling project about a local horror legend, The Peeping Tom. As he attempts to authenticate the legend and make it his own documentary, he and his crew become entangled in the project's chilling narrative.
- Release Date
- October 23, 2018
- Director
- Erik Kristopher Myers
- Cast
- Seth Adam Kallick , Rachel Armiger , Reed Delisle , Matt Lake , Eileen Del Valle , Janise Whelan , Michael Whelan , David Sterritt , Steve Yeager , Andy Wardlaw , Margaret Ehrlich , Matt Davies , Monika Butke , Mike Jones , Erik Kristopher Myers , Eduardo Sánchez
- Runtime
- 91 Minutes
- Main Genre
- Horror
- Writers
- Erik Kristopher Myers
Butterfly Kisses is currently available to stream on Tubi in the U.S.