8213: Gacy House (2010)
Shot and presented as a 'found footage' (pseudo) documentary, a very popular genre nowadays, "8213 : Gacy House" is yet another mockumentary, in the style of the sensational "[REC]" and last year's hit, "Paranormal Activity". And while it's a straight-to-DVD release, this moc-doc is surprisingly chilling and well-crafted. It's a "true" story of a team of paranormal investigators who explore the site of the former home of notorious serial killer John Wayne Gacy, who murdered 33 young men and boys between 1972 and 1978 in suburban Chicago. The cameras they set up in the crawl space where he buried his victims record the events of the terrifying night they spend in the haunted house. Despite the film tries to make us believe it's an authentic official crime scene footage, since it has neither a list of cast and crew, nor credits, "8213 : Gacy House" is actually a 100% fake documentary. Nevertheless, the film is so convincing, it somewhat made me believe it's actually a real footage (silly me), which is always a good thing. The first half is rather slow and not as engaging and scary as the second, but it's still watchable and intriguing. All the characters are hardly sympathetic, yet the somehow manage to make you care about them, and what's going to happen with them. The acting ranges from decent to mediocre, but overall, all the actors do a reasonable job, and are actually very believable in their roles. The long-time abandoned Gacy house itself is outrageously creepy, especially the spooky basement, which will give you the chills. Just like "Paranormal Activity", "8213 : Gacy House" delivers the scares without showing too much. Actually, the scariest thing about this film is that, it's presented in such a realistic way, it makes you believe this could happen in real life. At least for a moment. The fact that the story involves an actual killer, though in the shape of a ghost, adds even more authenticity to the movie. Although, the conclusion is a bit disappointing and the handheld camera style might cause you a headache, "8213 : Gacy House" is watchable moc-doc, which premise feels fresh and unique, and which offers plenty of good old-fashioned jump scares and some truly creepy images.
6 comments:
Never heard about this one before, is it really that decent?
i too found this one to be pretty scary, and whereas i agree it was hard to watch in spots because of the hand-held gimmick, i though the benefits of that - the added level of reality and thus tension and fright - was well worth the minor annoyance. the asylum horror always satisfies me, though.
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It was, actually. And I was pleasantly surprised how decent it was. :) The iMDB rating made me think it could be pretty bad, but I found it rather scary and very effective. You should give it a shot, Jaccs.
inmate 977, it was very effective, wasn't it? I actually don't mind the jerky hand-held camera effect at all. "[REC]" was filmed in the exact shaky style, and that made it seem even more realistic and terrifying. "Casy House" was very well-edited in fact, but some of the quick camera movements were a bit annoying.
It's a fake!
Don, who said it's not????!!!
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