Chris Barnes is dead. He and his girlfriend Lydia have (had) an urban exploration and ghost hunting channel and on one trip he comes across a video camera with footage that inspires him to make a documentary. A concerned friend pleads (in silhouette and altered voice) to help him figure out just what happened to Chris. This is footage from Chris’ online blog and his documentary Kult of Kehler. Chris explains that he and his girlfriend were looking around an abandoned house in Alabama where a young woman murdered her whole family and then killed herself out back in a ritualistic fashion. While rooting around, a garbage bag is discovered containing a nice camera and the equipment that goes with it. They take it and watch the footage that was caught on the discarded equipment. He drops it off at the police station after making a copy of the footage and dives deep. A couple guys were making a documentary on Alabama ghosts and there’s enough going on in it to make it interesting. Barnes edits it together chronologically and presents it for us, the viewer at home, to judge for ourselves. The two men are working off a famous book on the 13 Alabama ghosts and plan to check out all thirteen sites, eventually getting into a legend about a supposed fourteenth ghost. They pick up an audio guy to fill out the team and begin their trip, bullshitting and theorizing on the supernatural. It feels pretty natural and makes it more endearing than annoying, it helps that they’re all adults and act as such. Interviews with family (so goddamn charming) and actual locals (I’ve been thinking a lot of my childhood summers in Tennessee with my grandparents so it hit me pretty hard in my nostalgia gland) fill out some time and build up on the stories and Barnes will pop in every so often, narrating why he included the footage. It’s a solid workaround to the usual question of “why did the people presenting this supposed found footage decide to include this?” Checking out the graveyard location of a fiddle-playing spirit, the trio plan to set up camp in a burned down church nearby but change their plans when they realize the only tent they brought is missing the actual tent and are forced to camp in the car. Not much happens but during a wrap up interview with the director Dave, it looks like someone is watching the men in the distance. They decide to head out to the location of the supposed 14th ghost that was mentioned earlier and on their way they attempt to grab directions from some dude fixing his car on the side of the road. He completely ignores them and drives off. The men flee when he turns his truck around and the guys decide to avoid any confrontation. The audio guy Jeff mentions he actually knows a local but didn’t want to mention it because this place has a bad vibe, Dave isn’t happy that he didn’t mention this earlier and one of the most passive aggressive exchanges happens between the two. The woman doesn’t seem all that pleased to be talking with these men about town history and a string of disappearances that have gone down in the area. Of course, they’re heading to the same abandoned house where their camera equipment was discovered by the urban explorer who is now presenting this footage. On that subject, we jump back to Chris talking on how unwelcoming the town was and how the people were iffy about discussing any of the local legends and tragedy. We also see Lydia’s growing concerns about how obsessive her boyfriend has become with this footage they found in a garbage bag. Back to the footage, the three men find the abandoned home and explore as Jeff lays out the awfulness that went down in the home. He’s the one to ask because when he was studying law, he became fascinated with the hometown case in his forensics class. They set up for some nighttime filming and go to bed, one in the car and the other two in tents they picked up. The next morning, cameraman Josh is missing and the other two look briefly for him then check the footage on the trail cam. It’s… not great and the two me realize they’re in some dangerous waters and not because of any supposed ghosts. They go looking for Josh in the neighboring woods instead of bailing and we find out how the camera ended up left behind at the infamous property. As I stated with the first sentence, our videographer and narrator is no longer in the land of the living and we find out why as the movie comes to a close. It’s well-crafted and solidly acted enough to maintain interest while it wades in familiar waters but luckily doesn’t drown in ‘em.
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