Abbeville, AL is home to the titular legend and already this film earns my trust by shooting on location. Now, generations of children have been warned about the child-stalkin’ thing with a penchant for violent hugs and ear-piercing screams. It’s a good way to get your kids to rush home after dark and has also helped the place remain the only American town with a curfew. Searching for his missing twin sister (moving for her new job, happily pregnant and with her boyfriend driving her), Benny ends up in the small Alabama town and on a path to encountering some terrifying folklore. The opening footage of Sarah coming across something on the road lets us know there’s more than just legend to this nightmare entity. Benny records some footage of himself desperate to get in touch with his sister and then finding out she no-showed. He promises he’ll track her down. Following the last ping on her phone and discovering the area is ripe with disappearances and a conspiracy of silence by local authorities. A third character shoots introductory footage, introducing himself as Roberto, a Venezuelan at an Alabama university working on his senior thesis project for investigative journalism about the “other side of Abbeville”. Roberto shoots footage of his campus, the derelict areas of Abbeville and interviews students and locals. Benny talks his concerns over the disturbing occurrences in the area and explores the town that’s seen better days, talking to various townies who range from begrudgingly helpful to outright hostile. The discovery of an abandoned car in tough shape and a totem that looks straight out of someone’s Blair Witch nightmares has Roberto heading to a nearby diner (named after the local boogeywoman) and running into Benny who immediately recognizes that it’s his missing sister’s vehicle. So, our two heroes join up and dive headfirst into waters neither of them are prepared for. Local cops threaten jail time and revoking of student visas unless the duo drop it and get the hell away from digging into things. A helpful bartender points them towards a cabin in the woods where they may find some answers. They do find a video camera amongst the icky and unsettling garbage littering the crap-shack. On the camera is footage of a woman performing an occult ritual with splices of family video and a film student’s take on disturbing images. A blood moon eclipse approaches and something stalks the two curious and frightened young men. I’m a sucker for local folklore from the American South (you can blame plenty of youthful bonfires in Tennessee) and I’m also an unabashed found footage lover (trust me, I know it’s hurt me more than anything else) so Connor Flynn’s outing was right up my alley… the short runtime only sweetened the deal. Shaun Weiss (my hero from Heavyweights) gets a little cameo while our duo watch Internet footage about Huggin Molly, hearing various testimonials and watching hand-cam videos one usually finds on Nuke’s Top 5. So the runtime is filled out with different pieces of cinema which lessens the drag one usually finds in these things when you’re reliant on one man’s camera… we also don’t have to deal with the annoying cameraman we find in oh-so many of these first-person horrors. Granted, performances can be a little shaky but nothing offensive and idiotic choices are still getting made but if anyone in these things has survival instincts, we’d be in for one boring-ass time. It doesn’t exactly stick the landing but that just may be my preference for supernatural shenanigans unhampered by human maliciousness.
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