Behind The Screen: Review Of SCREEN (2012)

Yell! Magazine review:

Simultaneously reminiscent of Grindhouse Exploitation films and the new and old waves of “found footage” flicks, and with an opening newsreel sequence, and that kind of foreboding, Tubular Bells-ish music that just isn’t used in movies often enough anymore, SCREEN, directed by David Paul Baker is low-budget, self-sufficient Indie gold at it’s very best.

Spoilers ahead
The story itself starts with a news reporter covering a group of people who mysteriously met their untimely and grisly ends at a drive-in movie theater. Rewind 24 hours before the deaths, and we learn how our heroines, creepily cool punk rocker Carrie (Leslie Andrews) and straight-laced country gal Lola (Nicole Alonso) had come to find themselves at the aforementioned drive-in. We also learn that this isn’t the first instance of people being “scared to death” at this particular drive-in: Carrie eventually reveals that her grandfather was part of the original gang to die 40 years ago, and now she’s hell bent on finding out just what was on that damn SCREEN, and what it was that had killed her grandfather and the others.

Carrie and Lola take us on their road trip to the drive-in, with some wicked blogumentary style camera work via Carrie’s iPhone, which ultimately allows us to be passengers inside what appears to be a beautiful ’68 Pontiac Firebird (OK, in all honesty, I’m not that cool. I had a little help with identifying the year by a mechanic friend of mine, haha). Speaking of the blogumentary, I absolutely love, love, love how Baker manages to incorporate Carrie’s obsessive Internet blogging into the movie itself, and, as said before, the camera work. It gives the movie a sort of Blair Witch Project feel at times, but makes it seem more fluid and real than what BWP pulled off. Bravo, Mr. Baker! It turned out fantastic.

Along the way, the girls run into some locals. Carrie captures impromptu interviews with them about what they believed happened at the drive-in those 40 years ago. Theories range from a snuff film to a mass religious suicide to ghosts, but everyone they talk to is creeped out by the site, and says they’ve felt something weird going on there. Though, of course, none of them is so creeped out that they won’t attend the Halloween party held behind the spot.