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Drexler (Tyler Roy Roberts) is the head of a team of paranormal
investigators - who are really in it for TV fame and fake all their
paranormal experiences. And still, they agree to do a live show at the
Chetco River Lodge, a house built at the site of a massacre of Native
Americans, under close watch of professional doubter Dr Harding (Cameron
Lee Price) and his sidekick Dr Emma Bright (Stevie Mae). Drexler and crew
think they can control the situation by bringing a few fans and
professional medium Phantasma (Gabrielle Malate) for diversion, but right
from the beginning, everything goes wrong, as the lodge's owner Monty (Ty
Boice) is just too weird for everyone's good, but not the creepy kind of
weird, just weird, two of Drexler's fans (Lindsay Gustafson, Ella
Anderson) hide in a closet to make out and pretty much everybody stumbles
upon them, another fan (Brianna Paige Dague) tries to get it on with
Drexler a bit too obviously for live cameras ... and then people start
falling like the flies, killed by either arrows or tomahawks, so
apparently the spirits of the massacred Native Americans finally take
their revenge - and amid all of this, Drexler and Dr Harding still debate
whether this is real or just another hoax ... I have to admit,
the beginning of the movie has put me off a bit, as it looked like just
another paranormal investigation flick with yet another overconfident
know-it-all using all sorts of ghost-meters to sell us some basic special
effects for actual paranormal apparitions - and quite honestly there are
quite a few too many "found footage" movies and TV shows about
this around already. And that's exaxtly the genius of Beyond the
Shadows, it throws us into this world before playfully debunking it
(within the first five or so minutes) and then build a horror comedy on
the premise, a film that sure has its suspense and sudden shocks in all
the right places, but also ever so often veers off into parody without
ever going full moronic, and the film is also clever enough to not stick
slavishly to the found footage approach but give us a properly edited
movie instead. And a very capable cast playing a bunch of very colourful
characters really make this lots of fun to watch.
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