The art of the mockumentary is a hard line to balance between drama and comedy amongst many other factors. Is it a parody of a real documentary, is it something totally original,  is the audience in on the joke, or are they in the dark? These are the things that need to be considered if the film is going to be successful. A Cloud So High starts off on a high note with a well fictional interview segment with experts who are knowledgeable on the topic and could leave any viewer convinced. Then the film becomes a drag of a re-enactment that is a total mess.

War takes something out of everyone, most of all the soldiers that have to fight in it. Paul Saurling came back missing more than anyone could have imagined and after a vicious assault in the park, which some believe he orchestrated, he starts down an even darker path. What starts as voyeurism soon escalates to breaking and entering which earns him the title of the East-West Schooner Ransacker. Enjoying this new taste of infamy his breaking and entering becomes lethal and his voyeurism becomes stalking with seemingly no end to his reign of terror insight.

While A Cloud So High is clearly taking the subject matter of a disgruntled war veteran going from a burglar to murder very seriously, this is the kind of project that requires a strong acting cast and it lacks.  The lead that plays our “terrifying” threat is a joke, with his insanity played off like a super-villain complete with comically bad dialogue. This needed to be handled with some semblance of finesse, acting that drives the fall from grace and the creeping dread of someone becoming more and more dangerous.

So our non-threatening lead is not helping the film, so the rest of the A Cloud So High needs to compensate for it, unfortunately, the rest of the decisions the filmmakers made do anything but. Where a strong support cast could help, this feels like an amateur production. Where a compelling story could have carried the weaker cast, it is dry and just a rehash/variation of real-life serial killers that just feels lazy and uninspired. Everything that can save this movie never comes to fruition, aside from one or two moments in a 100-minute experience.

Every film has a balancing act depending on what type of film is being made. There is the tone, the strength of its actors, the editing, everything working together to make the film work at its very core. and A Cloud So High is just a mess from its core out. Where a strong component in any category could have saved the movie on any level, the acting is sloppy, the story feels lazy, and any interesting part is drowned out by the white noise of every poorly executed element. If the filmmakers really wanted to do a film about the Golden State Killer, with the connection to the Visalia Ransacker being so obvious, they should have just done it.

3 out of 10