Cult Pics and Trash Flicks: The Upper Footage (2013)

Director: Justin Cole
Country: Crime | Drama | Thriller
Genre: USA

Editor’s Notes: The following review is a part of Matthew Blevins’ weekly series Cult Pics and Trash Flicks

The element of surprise becomes a tricky proposition in an era with universal access to all of the “facts” that the world has to reveal to us.  With a quick search one can quickly demystify nearly any topic, particularly topics that are alluring to the denizens of internet culture, and movies have always been squarely in the wheelhouse of the pedantic and over-obsessed.  There are minimal barriers to separate access for those “in the know” and those with merely a passing fixation as they all play in the same chaotic playground in the cloud.  One might think that such universal availability of information would yield a more intelligent populace, but a casual perusal through the average Facebook news feed shows that ignorance and confirmation bias is still alive and well and pulling one over on a significant portion of the masses is still entirely plausible.  The problem with the viral marketing trickery used to promote The Upper Footage is that those most likely to fall for its campaign of playful deception are the same type of people that would watch another found footage horror film in the first place. 

It is a logical inevitability that something like this would present itself to the world as video recording devices sit innocuously in the pockets of half of the United States’ populace, and once something has made its way onto the internet there is no stopping it from spreading if it is compelling enough to attract our attention, even if only for a moment.

The Upper Footage posits itself as an actual unraveling of events, too mired in controversy for mass consumption, blocked from the public eye by self-serving socialites and the morally enraged.  The film goads you into staring with freeway-accident curiosity by using a viral marketing approach that makes it seem dubiously plausible that it had been cobbled together from found footage of the exploits of a group of over-privileged socialites in the douchiest night on the town in recorded history, but as it unravels the found footage genre tropes scream louder than its suspicious claims of genuineness.  It is a logical inevitability that something like this would present itself to the world as video recording devices sit innocuously in the pockets of half of the United States’ populace, and once something has made its way onto the internet there is no stopping it from spreading if it is compelling enough to attract our attention, even if only for a moment. 

Celebutante scandals ebb and flow with the changing of the tides and the revolving cast of characters in their fickle circles of tragically incognizant narcissists are usually put out to pasture by the age of thirty, so we are left with the sneaking suspicion that we had heard about these events a couple years back but promptly and righteously forgot about them.  Of course Quentin Tarantino would purchase this kind of raw footage with wild-eyed schemes of converting it into a controversial feature film, he’s always going on about some project that we’ll never see as we sit back and nod with cautious bemusement and wait for the next actual project to hit the screens.  I’m pretty sure everyone associated with Dancing with the Stars died in drug related scandal, that’s why they’ve got a new group of participants every season (maybe?).  It’s a perfect amalgam of questionable sources and dubious credentials to lend a modicum of credence to The Upper Footage’s assertions of its own authenticity, but the marketing team (and maybe your confused aunt) are the only ones that are buying into the bullshit.

The Upper Footage is ultimately a one trick pony with a debatably clever viral marketing campaign that will lose effectiveness once the cat is out of the bag.  The problem is that the film unravels everything it seeks to accomplish within its runtime, and there is no vitriolic equal to the fangless ferocity of a nerd scorned by viral marketing trickery.  It firmly establishes the inherent issues in the ephemeral nature of its ability to temporarily deceive by making comparisons of itself to The Blair Witch Project, which even in 1999 could only keep the lid on for a short time (and when was the last time you rewatched  that one?).  When the dust settles and The Upper Footage has inevitably exhausted any potential credibility through the filter of time and inexplicable appearance of its key players in other projects, it will have only its tenuous merits as merely one among countless found footage genre films to stand on.  

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Matthew Blevins

Director of Home Entertainment & Sr. Staff Film Critic

Behind me you see the empty bookshelves that my obsession with film has caused. Film teaches me most of the important concepts of life, such as cynicism, beauty, ugliness, subversion of societal norms, and what it is to be a tortured member of humanity. My passion for the medium is an important part of who I am as I stumble through existence in a desperate and frantic search for objective truths.

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