Think ‘The Office’ When Considering Whether To Watch ‘Found Footage: The Making of the Patterson Project’

Director Max Tzannes wants to have his cake and eat it, too. Given the narrative and stylistic loop-de-loops of his new feature, “Found Footage: The Making of the Patterson Project,” make that two cakes, or three — it’s hard to tell.Mr. Tzannes, who wrote the screenplay with David San Miguel, has made a movie that satirizes the conventions of the medium even as the film turns into the kind of genre he’s taking aim at. This sleight-of-hand is done under the guise of cinéma vérité or, rather, faux vérité. What we have is a meta-mockumentary that, in the end, sheds its meta-credibility. For what result, exactly? A horror film made on the cheap.To be fair to Messrs. Tzannes and San Miguel, “Found Footage” isn’t as convoluted as all that. Although the director takes as inspiration Rob Reiner’s “Spinal Tap” (1984) and “The Blair Witch Project” (1999), co-directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, the readiest analogy is to the British and American versions of a television program, “The Office.” The deceivingly off-the-cuff conversations, the handheld cameras, and the actors playing to, off, and against the camera — there’s a fine line between homage and imitation.“Found Footage” centers on a budding auteur, Chase Bradner (Brennan Keel Cook), whose dream it is to make a film based on the famous — or, depending on how one looks at these things, infamous — footage of the mythical creature known as Bigfoot. We’ve all seen it to one extent or another: the grainy footage of a tall, hairy being ambling along a forest glen with all the intensity of a CVS associate coming to unlock the dairy case. A film crew from France is on hand to record for posterity this cinematic quest.Erika Vetter in ‘Found Footage: The Making of the Patterson Project.’ Via Radio Silence ProductionsChase is joined in his endeavor by an assistant director and main squeeze, Natalie (Erika Vetter), and by Mitchell (Chen Tang), a devout Christian who is constitutionally incapable of imagining the worst about even the most scurrilous of characters. The “chief creative financier” is Frank Eikleberry (Dean Cameron), the owner of a cut-rate furniture store for whom Chase has filmed a series of blurry, late-night TV commercials. It is through Frank’s offices that the Bigfoot opus receives additional funding from a dowager, Betsy Hannigan (Suzanne Ford).Ms. Hannigan, you see, is a fan of the British actor Alan Rickman. Unknown to our stalwart director, Frank has promised Betsy that Rickman will not only be starring in the upcoming picture, but that the actor has agreed to meet her over tea. That Rickman died close to a decade ago is a problem that’s solved by hiring an actor to impersonate him — an actor whose name is, of course, Alan (Christian T. Chen). Fortunately, our production team has an ace up its sleeve: Daniel Radcliffe has agreed to star in the project. Actually, make that Danielle Radcliffe (Rachel Alig). And so it goes with this sardonic take on the bumbles and travails of independent film-making. Although amusing and intermittently laugh-out-loud funny, “Found Footage” doesn’t always differentiate between satire and condescension: The manner in which the naivete of its characters is underscored can seem cheap when it isn’t cruel. This is particularly the case with Chase and Frank, figures whose buffoonery is absent any sense of charity. Grant Ms. Ford the acting chops in making Ms. Hannigan something more than the sum of her addlements.As we reach the end of “Found Footage,” the movie changes in emphasis, transforming itself from a parody of a monster movie into the real thing when a demon is inadvertently unleashed upon our down-at-the-heels cohort of actors, make-up artists, and hangers-on. Messrs. Tzannes and San Miguel come up with some genuinely creepy moments — poor Mitchell is put through an otherworldly wringer — but they don’t entirely escape the trappings of monster-movie cliche.Will Mr. Tzannes’s yet to be released debut, “Et Tu,” a “dark horror comedy” featuring Malcolm MacDowell and Lou Diamond Phillips, prove more of the same or will it be something sharper? “Found Footage” has enough esprit to make a movie-goer curious.

Think ‘The Office’ When Considering Whether To Watch ‘Found Footage: The Making of the Patterson Project’

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