The vatican tapes 2015 trailer archive#
The vatican tapes 2015 trailer professional#

Those two examples, by the way, are in my opinion among the worst found-footage offerings in existence.

The vatican tapes 2015 trailer professional#

Would that it were! The amateur camera-wielding characters of films like The Gallows and The Possession of Michael King have more of a sense of where to place their cameras than do the professional filmmakers who made The Vatican Tapes. When it was originally a script on the Black List in 2009, The Vatican Tapes was intended to be structured like a found-footage film. What is she thinking during this pivotal moment? ~The world will never know!~ ItвЂ™s a shot that took more than ten seconds to set up, proof that there was someone behind the camera who did something other than toss a camera blindly into a room and say, вЂњOkay, letвЂ™s shoot the scene from there.вЂќДЄnd then, just as quickly as it shows up, the shot is over, and weвЂ™re back to things framed like this: SheвЂ™s framed by a pentagon of rafters, and the way she blocks the light from the window silhouettes her in the center of a tumble of triangles and rays thatвЂ¦ everвЂ¦ soвЂ¦ slightlyвЂ¦ suggest a radiant halo at first glance, or maybe even a pentagram if youвЂ™re reaching. Those subjects, by the way, more often than not, keep getting the tops of their heads chopped off by a frantically shaking camera that can never stay still long enough to show us an actorвЂ™s entire face at once, refusing to allow us the opportunity to interpret whatever flickers of emotion the actors may desperately be trying to convey.Д«ut, this particular shot, which comes toward the end of the film, as a possessed Angela leaps into the rafters mid-exorcism, feels comparatively like a breath of fresh air.

Otherwise, itвЂ™s a routine regurgitation of demonologyвЂ™s familiar myths and legends: needless to say, possession is nine tenths of the lore.The rest of the film is completely blown out, light sources completely fuzzing their subjectsвЂ™ outlines at best, or shining straight into the lens and entirely blinding the audience at worst. The filmвЂ™s one asset is a poised and sometimes genuinely creepy performance by Olivia Taylor Dudley as the latest unwitting squeeze of Lucifer sheвЂ™s even persuasive when rasping threats in, seemingly, the language of hell itself (with English subtitles!). It offers a milder take on the scares that once thrilled America instead of spewing pea soup by the gallon, as Linda Blair did in The Exorcist, Angela just neatly coughs up three eggs (вЂњWhere did you get these?вЂќ asks the cardinal, about as startled as if sheвЂ™d just recreated a classic Paul Daniels trick). Not вЂњfound-footage horrorвЂќ as such, the film nevertheless uses surveillance-style imagery whenever expedient and suggests that the Vatican enjoys instant access to the confidential CCTV footage of American hospitals and mental health institutions, something Edward Snowden failed to warn us about.Дirected by Mark Neveldine, half of the Neveldine-Taylor duo behind the Crank movies, The Vatican Tapes is distinguished by an almost heroic lack of humour. Before long, a specialist cardinal arrives from Vatican City, armed with holy water and the now-mandatory camcorders: heвЂ™s played by the glumly intoning Peter Andersson, a sort of pseudo Max von Sydow. Its prime case history involves a young Los Angeles woman named Angela, who shows worrying symptoms of housing an evil presence вЂ“ foul temper, a tendency to behave erratically in taxis and an ability to make hapless policemen do horrible things with lightbulbs.

The vatican tapes 2015 trailer archive#

The Vatican Tapes is a murky stew of satanic shenanigans that starts with the revelation that the Holy See has a secret archive documenting diabolic visitations. T he devil may have all the best tunes, but heвЂ™s none too fussy about his scripts.