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Auteur
USA 2014
produced by Daemon Hillin, Robert Stuvland, Kulthep Narula, Rachvin Narula, George Cameron Romero, B.J. Hendricks, Rajpal Narula (executive), James Cullen Bressack (executive), Albert Sandoval (executive) for Benetone Hillin Entertainment, Footcandle Studios, Prime Focus Media
directed by George Cameron Romero
starring B.J. Hendricks, Ian Hutton, Madeline Merritt, Matt Mercer, Ace Marrero, Eli Jane, Tom Sizemore, George Cameron Romero, Hannah Dawson, Elina Loukas, L. Stephen Phelan, Lucy Dawson, Val Mulligan
written by James Cullen Bressack, JD Fairman, Michael Sean Gomez, music by David Obaniyi
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Horror director Charlie Buckwald (Ian Hutton) has always been young and
green documentary filmmaker Jack Humphreys' (B.J. Hendricks) idol - but
eventually, Buckwald disappeared from the face of the earth, taking all
footage from his last movie with him. And now Jack is given the task to
track him down for his next documentary by his own father, a movie
producer who admittedly isn't half as interested in his son's documentary
(or career for that matter) as he is in Charlie's latest, lost movie. From
Charlie's crew, Jack learns that the shoot was more than a little
difficult as Charlie was borderline insane, his leading lady Katie
(Madeline Merritt) transmuted from a good-natured young and hopeful into a
promiscuous bitch during the course of the shoot ... and then there were
all these deaths linked to the movie, all natural deaths on the outside,
but too many to not think of something other than coincidence, plus there
was something odd about them. Jack later meets Katie, and the way she
throws herself onto him (almost literally) makes him wonder whether the
rumours about her weird character change aren't true after all, and she
shows almost too great an interest where Charlie is ... There were
rumours that Charlie is dead, but eventually, Jack receives an anonymous
postcard detailing Charlie's whereabouts, and even though Charlie is
highly paranoid, Jack eventually persuades him to let him interview him -
but instead of getting answers about the shoot, and especially the
infamous "exorcism scene", Jack gets sucked more and more into
Charlie's world, where there might be demons, there might be danger
emanating from even talking about discussing the movie, let alone watching
it, and thanks to Charlie's knack for realism, Katie might actualyl
possessed by a demon. Jack presses on with his documentary though - not
having the first idea what he's getting himself into ... Tom Sizemore
plays himself as being one of the actor's of Charlie's film, but rather
annoyed that the interview he's doing is about Charlie and not him - and
his performance is spot-on. Auteur is a very likeable
and creepy little film, basically because it tells a rather original story
in an original sort of way. Sure, much of this one is done via found
footage approach, but the writers and filmmaker were smart enough to step
away from a too puritanical approach to tell a fleshed-out story instead.
Also the characters are really well-written and well-played, especially
Charlie and Jack in their rather antagonistic relationship to one another,
and fans of low budget indie horror will find the many jabs at genre
filmmaking rather amusing - without it taking from the overall tension of
the movie. Totally worth watching, actually!
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