Found footage horror has always been one of the most polarizing subgenres around, with the technique often being used as a cheap tactic to drum up jump scares out of nowhere that haven’t been earned. Meanwhile, any movie that deliberately breaks the fourth wall and embraces self-awareness can come off as smug and condescending, so it’s a minor miracle that 2018’s overlooked Butterfly Kisses turned out as good as it did.
Boasting an impeccable Rotten Tomatoes score of 100 percent, writer and director Erik Kristopher Myers hinges his story on a conceit that’s so obvious and fascinating that it’s remarkable nobody had ever thought of it before. Deconstructing the entire existence of found footage, Butterfly Kisses questions what the results would be if any of its most famous titles were 100 percent genuine, and only small parts of a global supernatural phenomenon.
A camera crew follows a film student who uncovers a stack of videotapes revolving around a sinister urban legend known as Peeping Tom, utilizing the depths or artistic obsession and genuine academia to paint an intoxicating portrait of trying to prove the unprovable. To make things exceedingly more meta, The Blair Witch Project director Eduardo Sánchez even makes a cameo appearance as himself.
Fresh spins on found footage are increasingly few and far between, but looking at the praise being handed out to Butterfly Kisses on Reddit, it’s clear that upending the established tropes and trappings is a recipe for cult classic status, even if it’s still waiting on finding the size of audience it deserves.
