Butterfly Kisses

I'm not involved with the production, since a couple of other people have made that disclaimer. I do hate it when people involved in the film write a review, but I hope people have read enough of my reviews to know that I call it like I see it and am not in the film industry.This is a very disjointed film, ranging among so-called found footage from 2004, a 2015 filmmaker's attempt to piece it together and make his mark as a filmmaker, and a group of film documentarians making a documentary about both. That may be why people felt it was no well made, or boring, or whatever they said. They complained about the acting. I thought the characters were perfectly believable (though I did think it was strange that when [SPOILER] they found Feldman's body and reported it on the news, no one used his first name. He was just "Feldman." Dumb, but hardly a deal-breaker.It also manufactures an urban legend that's pretty creepy. Far from being confused, I was really interested how each of the films worked together—they work together because they are somewhat incompatible and that's the beauty of this film.One generally frightening scare, but the rest is just creepy dread. I've watched it three times now and I like it more and more every time I see it. I might buy it so I know I'll always have access to it.

Key words:SUBTLE unease through believable execution. Don't expect the scare to happen if you aren't patiently willing to watch with no preconceived notion.PSYCHOLOGICAL aspects were good. I enjoyed those, but I don't think when people select this film that is what they WANT.Warning:DO NOT WATCH if you aren't feeling PATIENT (had I watched this in a different mood, I would have hated it, but I went in with no expectations).Suggested watch time:At night when you're just shooting the tv breeze and want nothing specificI'm a rather tough critic of horror movies (yes, I because this low budget film four stars, you're probably rolling your eyes). I WILL explain.For starters, there was only ONE bad actor (or actress as it was the person playing Sophia) and she wasn't the main character. It wasn't DISTRACTING. Gavin wasn't winning an award, but he was serviceable (especially as he grew more unlikeable). Then again, it was smart of the filmmakers to write it this way. The actors didn't have to reach very far to sell a response. Most of them just had to behave like normal people would under the circumstances. That's great to do when you're not working with A-listers.I thought the "documentary-ception" sort of thing was smart. The fact that everyone was LOGICALLY tearing the original found footage apart was a great thing to see as our main character was becoming more unhinged and obsessed. I've also seen large budget movies try to pull off three layers and become confusing or distracting where this succeeded *cough*SuckerPunch*cough, cough*.I thought the hints of proof that they found were a cool take and not a far reach. I did enjoy the symmetry of every filmmaker taking on the project becoming unhinged (even though it isn't necessarily "fresh", I thought the way it was executed was well done and actually believable).This film was NOT over the top. It is NOT going to be a good watch if you are looking for gore, jump scares, or hard horror. The horror is entirely conceptual and I LOVE that people treated this very realistically (that vibe of disbelief...but didn't want to actually test it too far just in case...). I hate found footage. I actually liked this one for it's lack of "sale". The few "jump scares" they had were frozen and dissected WITHIN the film, which I also liked. It felt less insulting to me.I'm not going to say this was a GREAT film, I think this was a well WRITTEN low-budget film and a better watch than a lot of other low budgets on this site that get 4 stars for serving up obvious gore, thin plot, and stale jump scare tactics.

There are several levels of story within a story in this very entertaining found footage film. There is the original story of Peeping Tom, the fictional urban legend that is the center of the story. Then, there is the 2nd level, which are the 2 film makers who made the found footage that was found by the third level, a man named Gavin, who is a struggling filmmaker. The 4th level is then a crew filming a documentary about Gavin. At many times, it gave me the sense of not really knowing what was real in the film and what was not, which is exactly what they were trying to achieve. Good job. Bravo. And I am not easily fooled into suspending disbelief. I found myself several times trying to stop the film and think, wait, is this a real documentary??? It is a great film to watch. It has some scary moments, some jump scares, but the fear and horror of it is really in if you allow yourself to suspend that disbelief and not really know what is real and what is not, which is the entire premise of the movie. Is this found footage real? Is Peeping Tom real? Is this a real documentary? So many questions. I love this movie. Also check out the facebook page for gavin york. The film makers have expanded the movie into other media, such as facebook, some local cable show in Virginia, etc. A lot of hard work went into this.

I watched this because Amazon Prime categorized it as a documentary, both in the search engine and description. If you’re expecting a documentary it’s not clear until the end that it isn’t. Hard to rate because of how I thought I was taking it in, but thought I was loving it as a documentary and would probably assign it a 1 for straight up horror. For horror nothing new, not particularly well done, and would be completely predictable. Also, the acting in the “old footage” was abysmal. Made sense for what the documentary would be so but not for a fiction horror film. Total waste of time because the genre is categorized incorrectly on Amazon.