Delayed Reaction: Butterfly Kisses

Premise: A found footage/mockumentary horror movie investigating an urban legend that might be real.

I think we all remember the scene from The Princess Bride with the Sicilian. Before drinking a poisoned cup, Wallace Shawn's character goes through a "dizzying" explanation of how he's choosing which cup to drink from. It's one of the better uses of the "I know that you know that I know" joke that's been done a million (I counted) times. Butterfly Kisses is sort of the horror equivalent of this. You see it's is a horror movie designed to look like a documentary about some found footage that the filmmaker wants to prove is real. This movie has layers.

In 1999, The Blair Witch Project made $140 million off buzz created from people thinking it was real, or at least buying into the fun of thinking that it was. Since then, found footage filmmakers have been chasing that high. Most employ the style as an easy technique to mask other shortcomings (cast, budget, etc.). Butterfly Kisses is one of the few that has asked what it would take to make people question the authenticity of another movie now. It's an impossible task, but the movie does everything it can. The movie becomes a dissection of the found footage genre. It includes actual people in it like author Matt Lake and one of the directors of The Blair Witch Project. The documentary crew filming this question why they are doing this. The aspiring filmmaker who happens upon these supposedly real tapes is questioned along the way. Numerous people credit him for making a good found footage horror movie even while he insists that the tapes are real (or at least not made by him).

Ultimately though, the movie proves that with audiences, it really is "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." I love found-footage movies. I'm willing to suspend disbelief while I watch them. However, it destroys the effect if every 5 minutes, someone points out the possible inconsistencies of the filmmaking or reminds me of the easy tricks Found Footage movies use. I really appreciate the experiment of this movie, to see if you can put the genie back into the bottle and get audiences to question the authenticity again. However, Butterfly Kisses proves that there are diminishing returns the more meta one attempts to get about it.

While the central conceit of the movie is a letdown, this is quite well made. The "found footage" looks great. In the lead role, Seth Adam Kallick convincingly plays a man whose obsession slowly destroys his life. The legend of the Peeping Tom is a good one. Perhaps, if this movie was more about the main character doubting himself than the rest of the world doubting him, this could've been more effective.

Verdict: Weakly Recommend