Friday, July 11, 2014

Horror Off-Season: Afflicted


Afflicted is a 2013/2014 found footage movie written and directed by Derek Lee and Clif Prowse, who also star as Derek and Clif.  Woah!

I don't want to risk spoiling this too much, but I don't think any of this synopsis will be surprising.  The movie was originally conceived as a real-world horror web series similar to EverymanHYBRID or MarbleHornets, except without Slenderman obviously.  With the feature film landing as legitimately found footage to fill in events that would be intentionally left out.  This idea was dropped, probably due to inexperience with the found-footage format and the effort it would take to manage the smoke screen.

The film is presented as the travelogue "Ends of the Earth" being filmed by lifelong friends Derek and Clif, who've decided to leave their mundane careers behind and travel around the world together.  Clif, being a filmmaker, has decided to produce a documentary/video blog site about their adventures.  Added poignancy is delivered by the reveal that prior to leaving, Derek was diagnosed with an AVM, a malformation of blood vessels that could cause a cerebral hemorrhage and kill him at any time.  Despite a strong possibility of death if ever further than 20 minutes away from a major hospital, Derek feels he has to go on this trip with his friend.  It's super bro-tastic.

Just a few days into the trip, while in Paris, Derek attempts to hook up with a French girl named Audrey and brings her back to the hotel he and Clif are staying in.  Some time later, Clif and two friend they were traveling with decide to attempt a "Turkish Cockblock" on Derek, only to discover he's passed out and bleeding from the eyebrow and arm.  Despite this, Derek insists on continuing the trip and he and Clif travel to Italy.  From there Derek begins exhibiting symptoms of a bizarre illness and then things go totally wayward and wrong, while Clif insists on filming all of it and posting to the blog.

Without going any further into detail I feel like the reveal of Derek's illness is handled really cleverly.  At under 85 minutes the whole movie is very tight with very little cruft, the whole thing is super streamlined.  I think as part of that it comes off as slightly utilitarian to the story; spending only as much time as it needs to establish each point, which I don't actually fault in a found footage movie.  A real person filming real events would not flounder around establishing "mood" or creating artistic and visually stunning atmospheric shots.  I think this was part of the reason Mr. Jones was held back in my eyes: that started from a found footage perspective then dropped it for dream logic while still maintaining that it was footage rather than dropping the pretense altogether.  Afflicted never falls into this and maintains not only its found footage style but also keeps the video blog site in the mix the whole time due to Clif's compulsive filming and hands-free camera rigs.  It's really one of the finest explanations for why all the footage exists that I've seen yet.

Also, the characters of Clif and Derek are wonderful and their friendship, though bro-tastic, is very deep and manages to drive the movie; resulting in a lot really effective and touching moments.  While no single scene is stand out, there is one that felt like it missed the mark a bit in tone.  The concept of it doesn't really bother me, just the way that it was handled felt like it was too "epic" for the rest of the movie which was really character driven. The scene in question is a confrontation between Derek and Audrey towards the end of the movie. See, Derek is a vampire and Audrey is his sire. Derek has been tracking her, convinced she somehow holds the truth to how to cure or kill himself. Turns out Audrey isn't too happy with being reintroduced and has an epic vampire fight with Derek involving a lot of environment destruction and epic wind-up punches. In fact, this fight is such a big deal it's the only time the camera is actually damaged. Even a drawn out battle with an entire SWAT team didn't put a single nick in the lens. But it just felt like too much of a stock action beat with major destruction rather than a realistic fight or even just a heated argument which could've sufficed.

As one final odd bit of continuity:  Derek, as a vampire, beats up and then bites Clif and drinks his blood. Despite not meaning to and also being totally in the thralls of feral vampire bloodlust where you'd think he'd drink as much blood as possible, this does not kill Clif. Though much of the film after this involves Derek's guilt over killing Clif, his friend actually comes back after his burial. However, lacking a friend in Derek and the subsequent pep talk by Audrey, Clif doesn't understand how to handle his vampirism and goes completely feral à la Daybreakers. This is only shown in a mid-credits scene. Given that Derek did not intend to create a vampire and also would've drank his fill rather than leaving some amount of blood behind, which is another common way of creating a vampire, how easy is it to accidentally create a vampire in this world? Derek has a confrontation with a French SWAT team where he kills several of them, many by bites. Did he just create a vampire SWAT team? What about Feral Clif? If Derek accidentally sired Clif while feral, how many of Clif's victims become vampires themselves. At the end, Derek becomes an avenger only drinking the blood of "evil" people who murder others or hurt the helpless...how many of those become vampires?

Afflicted is a good movie, no doubts.  It's pretty cheap on Amazon Instant streaming right now.  Worth the watch.

--PXA

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