Director: Gerald Robert Waddell
Year: 2025
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Mockumentary
Plot:
Presenting a long-lost documentary, a filmmaker looking into the troubled final months of his dead brother discovers his obsession with a fabled mind-control experiment conducted by the government that has since slipped into urban legend, which soon brings him into the fold.
Review:
This was a fairly fun mockumentary with a lot to like about it. Among the better elements present here is the general approach taken introducing such a topic that this one covers as it’s rife with the kind of background and mythology that offers up a perfect excuse for its presentation. The idea of investigating his brother's death and tracking it back through an investigation into a supposed military and government mind-control project carried out on the public decades ago, which has a hint of truth to it based on an urban legend populating the period, works incredibly well here. The idea of looking into the background on the project, its history, and general disappearance from society before the brother uncovers everything with the physical evidence, tapes of footage, and other recordings detailing what’s going on and how it’s affecting people creates a strong impression throughout here.
The second half of this one, featuring the uncovered truth about what’s happening and how they’re being affected by the exposure to the project, does drop off the intensity, even though it also strangely ramps up the tension. The effects of the project and its intended purpose on victims are nicely explored through the footage showing interdimensional travel, portals, or figures appearing in the distance to influence their behavior or decisions, creating a fascinating psychological undermining of how the true effects of everything work. The problem is that very little of that is genuinely effective, putting them in danger as it basically devolves into the two of them trying to interpret what’s going on and whether they’re truly in danger or not, which is a bit disappointing. Whether or not the intent behind the action is scary is not the purpose, but it’s more about getting the whole thing revealed at the end, so it’s all dragged out at that point, which brings it down.
Overview: ***/5
An enjoyable enough if somewhat flawed mockumentary effort, there’s enough to like here that it remains fairly fun at what it is which is undone only by several slight factors bringing it down. Those with an interest in this type of presentation or curious about the subject matter will have the most to like here while most others out there might want to heed caution.
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