The Poughkeepsie Tapes

Objectively, this is perhaps a great pseudo-documentary that is easy to believe as portrayed, but subjectively a bland affair. That’s mainly because these sadistic games of various nutters have left me feeling slight apathy lately. There’s no fear, no tension, just a few blurry shots of women suffering, which basically just pass me by. Dowdle is capable of better craft. (15/12/2010)

Quite dense Found Footage, I would say more for the marginal audience, because what's on one's mind is on camera. Some shots are not pleasant to the eye and it's all quite nerve-wracking psychologically. You're thinking, damn, I would shit myself to know that someone regularly tapes me on my way home from school and is hidden in my house. It's all a bit about chattering and the tapes are played on the side. The quality of those tapes is really poor, like if you'd kicked the camera from the eighties and colored the image with a kaleidoscope. Found Footage is still Found Footage and there's nothing to be done about it, it's part of the risk of surveillance. It escalates until the last conversation, which didn't sit well with me and we're all glad it wasn't real. (29/09/2012)

For some mysterious reason, I missed The Poughkeepsie Tapes when it came out, and my TOP also said quite clearly that it wasn’t too good, so I didn’t even feel like going after it. It was a mistake! It turned out to be an interesting film experience and, even though I had mixed feelings at the beginning (too much blabber), in the end I’m satisfied. The hand-held footage is a lot more “low quality” than in REC, for instance, but also more realistic and intense. If I were to believe this is an actual documentary with real footage (especially the last interview), I would be very depressed. (26/10/2009)

You can't take The Poughkeepsie Tapes as an enrichment of film in general, only as a better contribution in the horror section. It works that way despite a fair number of missteps (*SPOILER ALERT* – the innocent defendant not defending himself and generally acting suspiciously, the "electric shocks to the clitoris.... and other things so horrible I won't say them" ho ho); and yet the long scene from the point of view of the killer (!) going home to his victim, for example, is an incredibly suspenseful affair despite the fact that we're watching it from a threatening point of view. I appreciate the lack of jump scares, though every other scene seems to be veering in that direction. I was pleased to see the masochistic relationship between bully and victim developed in Martyrs. Ironically, I found the balloon video the scariest. The Poughkeepsie Tapes have the classic ills of the horror genre, don't look for any greater meaning behind it, but the chosen form is just divine... (02/05/2011)

The film has a good atmosphere in the sense of inducing depression. I suppose that was the primary intention, and it worked. But it's just an example of how a good idea can be limited by creators being afraid to see it through to the end. Yes, there are unpleasant scenes, but this could have been much worse. The ending is interesting and shows the strength/weakness of the human psyche, which is captured very well and uncomfortably. (03/07/2015)