★★★☆☆
A first-person plunge into the Australian bush after a vanished father – bananas, ramshackle, and a lot of fun.
Australian writer-director Richard E. Williams unfolds his debut entirely in the first person, and the gimmick is more committed than most: it was shot on a custom head-mounted Sony VENICE Rialto rig built to mimic the movement and focus of the human eye.
You are Sean (Rijen Laine), trudging into a remote forest with fiancée Grace (Ana Thu Nguyen) and a couple of friends to find his father Paul, who vanished after the death of Sean’s young sister – grief here becoming a literal bridge between the living and the dead. What begins as a tense search curdles into something far stranger once a trapdoor gives onto a basement bunker hung with bizarre objects, and the film tips into feral survival-horror with a distinct whiff of the Resident Evil games.
The rig is ambitious; the film around it is rougher – a make-do look, line deliveries that are frankly ramshackle – but that scrappiness is part of the charm. This is a low-budget gem that’s wonderfully bananas and happy to be silly, keeping you guessing partly because it isn’t always clear what you’re meant to be looking at.
Nguyen makes a strong impression as the group’s instigator-conscience, and Mischa Heywood (of Bring Her Back) lingers as the lost sister. Sticking fastidiously to one viewpoint dodges the tonal wobble that sinks lesser found footage, and the flashlit forest passages are enjoyably nerve-shredding. For found-footage lovers who prize derangement and goofy plot twists over polish, this is an unexpected delight.
Dead Eyes played at Tubi FrightFest in London.