Like anything in Hollywood, the found footage genre needs to constantly evolve or risk feeling stale. Ever since The Blair Witch Project both tricked and terrified audiences with its innovative marketing campaign, the next generation of independent filmmakers have attempted to replicate the film's success with varying degrees of triumph. On one hand, movies like Josh Trank's Chronicle have excelled by combining found footage's gritty realism with the CGI-saturated superhero genre, while Cloverfield expanded on The Blair Witch Project's horror by combining its intimate perspective with the dispassionate destruction of a sci-fi monster film. However, fans searching for a more subversive installment in the underrated sub-genre should check out 2018's Butterfly Kisses, a largely overlooked horror film guaranteed to make you blink.
Directed by the late Erik Kristopher Myers, the film combines the supernatural elements of The Blair Witch Project with the documentary format of found-footage classics like Lake Mungo and the more recent Horror in the High Desert, delivering plenty of terror and thought-provoking fright throughout its 91-minute runtime. Although the lack of a broad theatrical release meant Butterfly Kisses didn't initially reach a wide audience, the film's premiere on streamers nonetheless garnered a small group of extremely positive reviews and a 100% Critics' Score on Rotten Tomatoes, solidifying Myers' movie as a hidden gem which deserves more attention...