★★★★☆
A gang of (mostly) female ghost hunters chase the Ripper through an 1888 pinhole camera, and find that the real monster is Victorian society itself.
The premise asks film-history buffs for some suspension of disbelief. In Whitechapel, 1888, as the Ripper killings begin, amateur inventor Tamworth (Tom Stourton) builds one of the first moving-image machines, a pinhole camera fitted with wax cylinders for sync sound, and turns it on an all-women secret society of ghost hunters, their ranks running from sex workers to a respectable lady, all convinced the murderer is not a man but a violent spirit.
A debut for both director Joseph Archer and writer Cathy Wippell (who appears among the women), it reaches us as recovered footage, bequeathed to the British Film Archives in the will of one Mary Tamworth and surfacing only in April 2026. The visual conceit is the big draw: that rare circular aspect, sepia tones, a pleasing crackle, though it’s plainly digital, the scratches applied after the fact, and best not scrutinised for how an 1888 rig manages a steady frame-rate and synced sound (on wax cylinders no less). Go along with ask of this, and you will be rewarded with one of the most intriguing found footage horror-thrillers there is.
An opening note warns the material has been tampered with, and so it proves: subliminal frames, jolts of montage, collages of screaming faces. Rather than jump scares, Archer offers an unsettling study of patriarchy, turning over the male gaze, mob hysteria, journalistic integrity and the right to look, right down to a Ripper tour running while the bodies are still warm. For all the dismembered corpses, the monster it settles on is Victorian society.
And yet Snapshot is often very funny. This is Peeping Tom by way of The Elephant Man, and worth seeking out for anyone drawn to Victoriana, found footage or the formally playful edges of cinema.
Snapshot played at Tubi FrightFest in London.