The Poughkeepsie Tapes

     Ok, so most cult films tend to be more on the older side because a cult following usually takes time, but now and then a cult film can be relatively new if it manages to get enough of a following within just a few years. In this case, The Poughkeepsie Tapes definitively achieved this. It was filmed and ready for release in 2007, but for unknown reasons, it was pulled from theaters and held for four years until being released as a video on demand, but it wasn't until a full ten years after being made that it finally got a DVD release. This is what makes it a cult film, one person heard about it, then told someone else, and so on until enough people had complained about wanting to see it but not being able to find it that it had to be widely released. And even now it's still a bit hard to find, but definitely worth the effort of trying.  

     It's a found footage film, which is a genre that may sound a bit overdone at this point but can still be pulled off if it's original enough. This one works because it resides in an area between being completely believable and totally disturbing, a combination that can easily ride the line between whether it's real or not. It begins with a criminology class discussing the events that led to the discovery of 500 videotapes left behind by a serial killer. The tapes are beyond disturbing and what's discussed about them in class is almost as freaky as what is actually shown on the tapes. 

      The killers' first few tapes are filled with strange balloon porn, such as women being made to sit on balloons and bounce up and down till they popped, etc. Around the fifth or sixth tape, the real scariness begins when the killer approaches an 8-year-old girl and abducts her, we learn afterward that she was found raped and murdered later that day. 

      The murders progress in increasingly disturbing ways. The killer pretends to have a broken-down car and hitches a ride with a man and his pregnant wife. Then on one of the tapes, the woman is awoken from being drugged only to find that her baby has been cut out and that her husband's severed head has been placed in her belly. 

      The tapes get worse when a 17-year-old girl named Cheryl Dempsey is filmed being abducted, hogtied, and forced to repeat over and over that her name is no longer Cheryl but is now "slave". She's brought to the killer's basement where he tortures her relentlessly into complete submission, and forces her to wear a rubber maid's outfit with a mask, leaving us to only be able to see her terrified eyes underneath. More tapes are shown where Cheryl is made to assist in the murders of other victims in increasingly violent ways. 

      The acting is so convincing that the viewer is sometimes left wondering how on Earth they were able to film it without the actors suffering an equal amount of actual torture. More victims fill the tapes, dismemberments are shown, and the fear starts feeling very genuine. 

      Through the criminology class, we learn that a policeman is eventually arrested for the crimes as his semen is found at several of the crime scenes. He is eventually put to death by lethal injection. A few days after the execution more murders are committed and it becomes obvious that the wrong man was put to death. It turns out that the actual killer had somehow gotten hold of the cops' donation to a fertility clinic and used it to plant his DNA at various crime scenes. The wrongly executed cop is posthumously exonerated but no one really pays attention to this news because the terrorist attack on 9/11 occurred the day before and this news completely dominated the airwaves and overshadowed what had happened with the falsely accused policeman. 

      More tapes are watched, showing more victims murdered in increasingly gruesome ways. We learn that the tapes were found at a house in which not a single fingerprint was discovered, the only thing left behind is a wooden box the size of a coffin containing what is assumed to be the corpse of Cheryl Dempsey, shockingly she is found to be alive but in horrible shape, too disturbing to even be described. We do learn that while in the hospital recuperating Cheryl mysteriously continues to show recent injuries and that she is so mentally disturbed by over ten years of constant torture that she compulsively continues to injure herself, thinking that this is what is normal and expected of her. An interview with her later shows what can only be described as the shell of a human who doesn't know how to think for herself and can only ask what the interviewer wants her to say, as this has become her normal existence. We also notice she is missing a hand along with other scars and somewhat healed injuries. A caption displayed after the failed interview lets the audience knows that Cheryl soon after committed suicide leaving a note stating that she loved her torturer, that he loved her, and that she believed he would return for her someday. 

      A new film is then shown of a rope being tied to the neck of a recently buried corpse that we can only assume is Cheryl being pulled from her grave and taken away. After the movie's credits, there is a short film of a woman whose mouth is taped shut and who is told that as long as she doesn't blink, she'll live. After a few very tense moments, she blinks and is stabbed in the neck. 

      As gruesome as the tapes are, there are still about 27 tapes unaccounted for and we're left to assume that the killer took these with him and contain footage so horrifying as to make all the others seem tame by comparison. 

      This is an extremely disturbing movie and I can see why its release was probably delayed due to its subject matter. What is shown on the tapes has such a feeling of intense realness that it's actually very believable and what isn't shown and simply described can only be visually imagined by the sickest of minds. A terrifying film to say the least, and even though we know it's just a movie, it's somehow believable enough to leave a very nasty taste in your mouth.