Frazier Park Recut is undoubtedly one of the most creative uses I have seen for the "found footage format". Normally, the issue with found footage is its inherently gimmicky nature. To get over this "gimmick" feel, the found footage needs to justify its own existence. Horror movies often use found footage, but at a certain point it feels unrealistic or ridiculous. To say nothing of how often one may wonder if the movie would have been better if the shots had been relatively stable, planned, and properly exposed. Frazier Park Recut is at once fantastically self aware of these problems, and justifies its found footage format throughout.
Frazier Park Recut is less of a horror film and more of a dark comedy, and this is no way a bad thing. The two main characters, Tyler and Sam, are developed exactly enough where you as the viewer care about them and like them. Better though is the character "Tom Morris" who at numerous points made me laugh literally out loud with his so obviously evil and bizarre character. His character eventually takes the lead for himself with the found footage format, and his hijacking of the viewer's experience is at once clever, funny, and successfully disturbing at times.
Primarily, I saw Frazier Park Recut as a commentary on amateur film making. As obviously all the mistakes made by Tyler and Sam in the movie were fake mistakes the filmmakers by the same name created. Their numerous amateur blunders in their making of the film within the film makes the whole piece fantastically self referential. From the beginning, you know there has to be some sort of bad ending coming for them, but that murderous plot is the mode of movement for a meaning. The cheesiness of Frazier Park Recut such as the obvious set up where two people go into a cabin with a strange stranger, and the tensions between them are what makes it. Because the film inside the film is made to be even cheesier, and the character's struggle while creating it are the exact problems everyone who has ever tried to make a film have run into. The hijacking of a poorly done amateur film by a murderous narcissist is the plot, but the message has to do with the earnestness of small budget productions. The personal investment that goes into these productions, the mistakes, the sweat, the tears, the fights all of this is encapsulated in the film with a funny self-referential plot that you can't help but love.
Frazier Park Recut is less of a horror film and more of a dark comedy, and this is no way a bad thing. The two main characters, Tyler and Sam, are developed exactly enough where you as the viewer care about them and like them. Better though is the character "Tom Morris" who at numerous points made me laugh literally out loud with his so obviously evil and bizarre character. His character eventually takes the lead for himself with the found footage format, and his hijacking of the viewer's experience is at once clever, funny, and successfully disturbing at times.
Primarily, I saw Frazier Park Recut as a commentary on amateur film making. As obviously all the mistakes made by Tyler and Sam in the movie were fake mistakes the filmmakers by the same name created. Their numerous amateur blunders in their making of the film within the film makes the whole piece fantastically self referential. From the beginning, you know there has to be some sort of bad ending coming for them, but that murderous plot is the mode of movement for a meaning. The cheesiness of Frazier Park Recut such as the obvious set up where two people go into a cabin with a strange stranger, and the tensions between them are what makes it. Because the film inside the film is made to be even cheesier, and the character's struggle while creating it are the exact problems everyone who has ever tried to make a film have run into. The hijacking of a poorly done amateur film by a murderous narcissist is the plot, but the message has to do with the earnestness of small budget productions. The personal investment that goes into these productions, the mistakes, the sweat, the tears, the fights all of this is encapsulated in the film with a funny self-referential plot that you can't help but love.