Found footage films, in the year 2018, are the movie equivalent to an 80s celebrity still trying to stay relevant 30-something years later. The magic has worn off, the fad has faded into the past, it’s something to look back on with nostalgia. They were daring and revolutionary at one point–despite not being terribly scary, The Blair Witch Project shook up the genre like no other–and writers and filmmakers jumped at this great opportunity to make a realistic, compelling film on a low budget.

But at the end of the day, the format becomes stale, and all fear is dissolved once you’ve seen enough of them and started asking yourself why they didn’t just turn the cameras off if they were in the face of danger. There are SIX Paranormal Activity films. Twice as many as the Human Centipede films.

Wekufe: The Origin of Evil attempts to circumvent the typical holes and routines of found footage films, offering an interesting location, and parallels between a fictional story and the actual reality of where they are. It explores themes of corruption and sexual violence, epitomized here in the form of Trauco, a horned demonic beast with a huge penis (oh, behave). More than anything, director Javier Attridge has added elements of self-awareness, as if they’re all in on the joke and poke fun at themselves for even trying to create a found footage film in the first place.

In the great tradition of Blair Witch by keeping the real identities of the actors, a journalism student named Paula travels to a remote, Patagonia island in southern Chile with her boyfriend Matias, whose seemingly ironic goal is to compile enough footage to make a found footage film. (Told you it was meta.) There, they investigate the link between the high number of sex crimes and the myths and legends that surround the area. Behind these legends lies something much more obscure that starts to unravel as they venture further; apart from the supernatural, they discover that much of the horror lies in the deeply entrenched violence in reality.

Wekufe is carried strongly by the two leads; their references and critiques of other found footage films from the past are told with a meta, self-deprecating grimace as if to say “yeah, I know, but just watch for a second,” and have a surprisingly electrifying chemistry together on screen. There are many nuances and details that build a gradual sense of discomfort and creepiness in the whole “small town mystery” shroud that it aims for. The socio-political and cultural aspects of it, interwoven in a Serbian Film similarity, do add another layer of depth to the journey of these out-of-towners, making a great use out of the myths and legends that you begin to wonder are real or not. (Were these sex crimes committed by men or monsters? Are they the same thing??)

Attridge has created a solidly-made film that has been handicapped by following the found footage narrative and format. The genre, in general, has unfortunately become so stale that even all the noble attempts of originality in Wekufe do not end up with a very satisfying payoff. And despite its effort to remain unpredictable, we still wonder why they didn’t just turn the cameras off.

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