The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007)

Directed by John Erick Dowdle. Starring Lou George, Ron Harper, Ben Messmer, Ivar Brogger, Samantha Robson, Stacy Chbosky, Amy Lyndon, Michael Lawson, Kim Kenny. [R]

Gratuitous exploitation film designed as a pseudo-documentary whose subject is the “Water Street Butcher,” a serial murderer who raped, mutilated, and killed numerous people in the eastern United States; the title refers to a raided house in Poughkeepsie, NY where not only are several corpses found, but also hundreds of VHS tapes showing the killer committing horrific and profane acts upon his victims. May be of some interest to die-hard fans of true crime stories and so-called “torture porn,” but as a feature film, it’s artless, relentlessly cruel, and utterly lacking in insight or justification. And since the killer is depicted as having no modus operandi, the filmmakers exploit this nihilistic motivation as an excuse to insert whatever cheap, horrific set-ups and executions that they want. The bleary and degraded found footage, while gratefully obscuring some of the most appalling acts, is an eyesore and conceptually defeating—no legitimate serial killer documentary program/feature would turn into a snuff film by actually showing the murders. By revealing too much, it doesn’t actually reveal anything at all, making for one queasily hollow experience. One clever touch: a major update in the case is completely overshadowed in the news cycle because it showed up in papers the day after September 11. Pulled from release in 2007 without explanation before finally seeing the light of day through video-on-demand seven years later.

12/100