A movie so ahead of its time that the ‘Found Footage’ genre at this point basically consisted of ‘Cannibal Holocaust’ and ‘The McPherson Tape’. ‘America’s Deadliest Home Video’ would predate even the GENRE titling of ‘Found footage’ by *at LEAST* 5 years. And the fact that it comes out as such a fully formed idea right off the bat is honestly quite impressive.

The film came about when the director was working in an edit studio and stumbled on a VHS tape consisting of 2 hours of unedited vacation footage of a young couple heading to Vegas to see a concert. He got so wrapped up in the story of this raw footage, that he started to wonder if there was something to the concept of making a movie that felt just like the tape he’d found…and thus, this film came to be.

The film is presented in its entirity as a ‘found footage’ piece and follows ‘Doug’ a young ‘CRAZY’ guy who’s just picked up his first video camera, and is just messing around with it. Unfortunately while messing around, he accidentally finds out his wife is cheating on him, so in a spur of the moment act of impulse, he steals their van and decides to go on a cross country journey of self discovery.

And its all very twee and by the numbers for a while until, while stopping off at a quarry to recount memories of his father. Doug accidentally sees something that he shouldnt. and winds up hostage to three armed and VERY dangerous criminals who are in the midst of a spree.

When the gang realise that Doug isnt an immediate threat, AND that he has one of those new fangled video cameras with him, the group decide to take him along on their crime spree as a bit of fun. And slowly they begin to warm to him a bit, and Doug begins to open up to them…Its a bit of an unconventional realationship as the gang still continue to murder him regularly, but they also rely on Doug to help film their sprees for prosperity and eventually even try to involve him in some of their fun.

But actions have consiquences, and soon tension begins to mount within the group, things get taken too far and we hurtle into a 3rd act where emotions get the better of our group, and things turn bloody.

I tried to go into this one as blind as possible, and came away somewhat pleasently surprised as a result. The whole film is essentially presented as if someone was just stop/starting a camera while doing a travelogue, and barring one moment right at the very end of the film where they kind of spoil the illusion by having the camera cut into footage being shot by a professional camera team. I think they recreate that feeling of ‘vacation’ footage really well, with only minor flaws really.

The scripting is rock solid, really nice fluid plotting, the act structuring is messy, but here it works in the films favour, presenting the carnage with unknown gaps of time in between meaning we never really know how long this is going on for.

In fact, for the most part i’d argue that if I HAD just found this on a blank tape in the wild and I had NO idea what this was, at least initially I’D have thought it was real…which is pretty impressive honestly.

There are however some tells, the dialogue is probably the biggest issue, some of the lines are a little *too* polished in places to feel like they were spur of the moment. there are conversations that read like a Tarantino script, which…if this was aiming to be theatrical, would have been fine. But here mark clear tells that this is staged. The total like of flubs or fumbles too dont help the films case as noone speaks clearly and perfectly 100% of the time…

The characterisations are solid, but a little *too* convenient. everyone stays in their character lanes a little *too* closely, we have a group of people in a very stressful situation, but they all maintain the archtypes we’re introduced to in the beginning and they dont really move out of those typings for the full runtime, which is a bit of a shame as, its well known that stress can cause people to be unpredictable and act off character, which would have almost certainly enhanced this film. I mean, whats here still works fine. And there are enough twists and turns throughout to genuinely keep folks interested. But I just wish there’d been a bit more range.

To that end, another thing that works in this films favour, but may not ultimately lead to the best viewer experience is that the pacing is a bit scattershot and by the end of the 2nd act it all starts to feel a little bit repetative. for the most part the film moves at a real clip and keeps a good pace, but there are moments where they slow down, I assume to give the audience some time to sit with the characters when they arnt being goofy or psychopaths actively. And I feel like those moments could have done with another pass through to really get them optimised…They’re nice moments, but they dragged quite a bit at times and it left me slowly gliding over to my phone while they just…did their thing.

Beyond that? the directions immaculate. In fact, i’d go as far as to say this is probably one of the most convincing and best looking ‘Found footage’ movies of the genre. shots are clearly carefully planned and structured to look as close to a novice messing around with a camera as possible. That may be taken as derogatory given this was a professional film maker behind the lens. But I cannot stress enough how hard it is to make something look INTENTIONALLY like a novice is working a camera when your a trained professional. It takes real skill, because, if you actually GOT a novice to try and make this, they’d overcomplicate it. Its one of those moments where you need to be an expert of the craft to be able to understand the mechanisms that ‘keep it simple’.

With that being said however, the cine is a bit of a mixed bag. I love the intentional fumbles, the wobbliness of the camera, the fact that non of the shots are straight and that the majority of the film is either handheld or balanced awkwardly on whatever is at hand, because…in real life, it would be pretty much. But there are handful of shots here that, much like the dialogue, are just a little too polished and well structured, and again, those moments really did pull me out of the film, because I noticed when the rule of thirds on composition was being set up (mainly because the film DOESNT do that very often) because inevitably it meant that something big was about to go down, and they needed to frame it appropriately, because NOT doing it may mean the shot was missed, leading to audience confusion…Like, I know WHY they did it. But it could have maybe been a bit more conspicuous.

Performance wise? for SOV? this is actually pretty solid! I was really impressed by all our players and thought they did a really good job! they have a great physical energy and (for the most part) delivered their lines in a believable way. The issue here came from the dialogue itself, which, as mentioned was at times a little too polished…meaning the deliveries felt a bit unnatural or theatrical for this kind of a production. Cant fault the cast really for that mind. But it did stop things from really getting up to the next level.

No soundtrack either for this (for obvious reasons) but the soundscape presented again is super naturalistic, feels solid and the dialogue is clean, clear and nicely captured. I didnt miss a word!

‘Americas Deadliest Home Video’ is frankly a must see of ANY fans of the SOV subgenre. and is especially important to see for any ‘found footage’ fans. While it IS imperfect, I think this is probably the strongest entry in the genre (at least up to the mid 2000’s) that i’ve seen. An immersive experience and genuinely entertaining. You can find this via ‘Terror Vision’ who’ve put it out on a jam packed bluray filled with goodies. And I highly suggest you nab a copy while you can.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/americas-deadliest-home-video/