Show Yourself is a supernatural drama from writer/director Billy Ray Brewton that follows Travis ( Ben Hethcoat ), an actor who has returned to a camping spot from his past to scatter the ashes of his recently-deceased friend, Paul ( Clancy McCartney ).

Things get off to an interesting start when after a short drive interspersed with amateur footage of a group of friends goofing off, Travis arrives at his cabin and is immediately berated by the cabin owner who is inexplicably hostile towards Travis and has only agreed to rent him the cabin because his daughter is a fan. Travis gets a call from his friend, Lane ( Barak Hardley ), who teases Travis about the flowery eulogy has written for Paul’s funeral and discussed Travis’ plans to work on a remake of the classic Fellini film,  . It’s at this point that the film slows to a halt as it has over an hour to fill and not much else to do. We get a 5-minute long montage of Travis editing footage for some sort of slideshow of Paul’s life and drinking bourbon to illustrate the emotional toll created by his death.

After the first scene, Travis never interacts with anyone else in the world, with the only dialog (which there is a considerable amount of) occurring through Skype, almost all of which is centered on how much everyone misses Paul and how Travis is handling the task of spreading his ashes. There’s also your occasional ghostly happening with videos playing on Travis’ laptop and visions of Paul swimming in the nearby lake. While it’s clear quite early on that a haunting is occurring, Travis ignores this for as long as possible and when he does become convinced of what is happening, he doesn’t seem particularly bothered as he continues to wander occasionally spreading more of Paul’s ashes and having conversations about how no one can understand how hard this is on him.

The script is quite persistent in trying to sell the gravity of Travis’ strife with drawn-out scenes of somber reflection, but somehow, very little of it sticks. Perhaps it’s because the anesthetizing effect of the plodding narrative, but beyond that, we’re always being told of the power of a bond that we never get to actually see. We get a disjointed smattering of clips thrown up on screen a few seconds at a time, but we don’t get to see any meaningful interactions with Paul until the final 20 minutes. Not only that, but everyone is so preoccupied with Paul that we get very little insight into Travis, the character that we are actually falling. With the lack of scares or story development, we’re left with a lot of talking about a character that we have no reason to care about, conducted through the static and detached filter of a Skype conversation. With that being said, Hethcoat turns in a fair performance that at least tries to make you care and carries a weight and gravitas when he’s finally given cause to emote.

The ghostly happenings are predictable, but there are a few scenes that use camera angles and shadows to craft some clever scares and while the screener we were given was very low quality, it was still possible to see some deft editing and cinematography through the mess of pixels. The score is more baffling with serious moments being accompanied by upbeat, jaunty instrumentals that sound more like Winnie the Pooh leading the woodland creatures through the forest than a man being tormented by visions of his dead friend.

I can’t really see any reason to recommend Show Yourself. It’s not good, but it’s also not humorously bad, it’s just pretty dull.