PopHorror Let's Get Scared
Butterfly Kisses is a new found footage horror film/mockumentary directed by Erik Kristopher Myers (Roulette 2012). The film stars Seth Adam Kallick (8 Ball Clown II 2019), Rachel Armiger (Revan 2015), and Reed DeLisle (Shelter For the Bloodstained Soul 2016).
At its center, Butterfly Kisses tells the story of a pair of student filmmakers, Sophia (Armiger) and Feldman (DeLisle), who were studying the urban legend around a creep known as Peeping Tom. This figure is said to appear at the end of a spooky train tunnel if you stare down it without blinking for an hour. When both students disappear, their footage is found by a wedding videographer named Gavin (Kallick), who decides to finish their film.
As a huge found footage fan, I was excited going into this movie, and by the end, I was blown away. As a genre, found footage films can fall victim to cliches fairly easily. Usually, footage is presented at the start of the film as being discovered in a mysterious location. The film reels are shown, and the movie ends with the unexplained death or disappearance of the shooters of the original video footage. This is where Butterfly Kisses turns the genre on its head.
While we are watching Gavin finish Sophia and Feldman’s film, we are also witnessing Butterfly Kisses’ director Erik Christopher Myers and his crew documenting the wedding photographer as he tries to win over support and respect for his completed version of Sophia and Feldman’s film. To make things even more interesting, Myers interviews other found footage directors, such as Eduardo Sanchez, the director of one of the most famous films of the genre: The Blair Witch Project. It soon becomes apparent that, as much as Gavin needs his film to succeed, Myers is equally ambitious. But does this desire to succeed make Gavin and Myers more likely to manipulate the truth?
The movie is filled with solid performances, especially rom Seth Adam Kallick as the slowly unraveling Gavin. My only critique was that the actual horror in Butterfly Kisses falls a little flat, and the villain is never one that will haunt your nightmares. But it hardly matters. This is a dazzling feat of filmmaking that takes the viewer down a rabbit hole we never expected to go.
