Nastiness in horror movies is like a seasoning: essential for flavor, though potentially overwhelming, especially when not mixed in well. Most contemporary horror movies should be nastier, but not every horror filmmaker should posture like a misanthrope. It doesn\u2019t really help the makers of \u201c15 Cameras,\u201d an unappealing horror movie about a pair of millennial homeowners turned leering voyeurs.<\/p>\n
\u201c15 Cameras\u201d follows the lamentable \u201c14 Cameras\u201d and its slightly weaker predecessor, \u201c13 Cameras.\u201d All three movies try to stoke anxieties related to surveillance\u2014tiny cameras, they\u2019re everywhere!\u2014and, in \u201c15 Cameras,\u201d complicity, since all three movies take place in houses that are being filmed with closed-circuit cameras by creepy landlord Gerald (Neville Archambault). Gerald\u2019s now presumed dead\u2014and in real life, Archambault died last year\u2014but at least one of his properties still has several hidden cameras inside the walls and fixtures. <\/p>\n
Now Gerald (James Babson) is known as \u201cThe Slumlord,\u201d an urban legend, and one of his duplex houses has been heedlessly snapped up\u2014and at a steep discount\u2014by true crime obsessive Sky (Angela Wong Carbone) and her squeamish boyfriend Cam (Will Madden). You might think that Madden\u2019s thuddingly literal character name bodes well for an (intentionally) funny horror movie about the revealing effect of technology on paranoid, weak-willed young people. You would be totally wrong, perhaps in surprising ways. <\/p>\n
For starters, \u201c15 Cameras\u201d lacks the specificity to be either good as satire or an atmospheric mood piece. Both Sky and Cam behave in ways that suggest their creators can\u2019t stand them, or really, can\u2019t stand what they vaguely represent. That palpable disdain jumps out in an early scene where see Sky and Cam make out while watching an inexpertly parodied true-crime series called \u201cThe Slumlord Tapes,\u201d which features an arch voiceover narration that might have made more sense in an amateurish YouTube video. (ex: \u201cHer boyfriend Marc, deceased, in the next room\u2026\u201d) <\/p>\n
Cam objects to how distracted Sky apparently is, and while this could be the start of a genuinely hilarious and well-observed scene, it\u2019s really an excuse to (lightly) incriminate Sky, who\u2019s otherwise barely a supporting character in \u201c15 Cameras.\u201d Because when Cam balks about Sky\u2019s inattention, she reflexively pouts, \u201cThat\u2019s a little unfair,\u201d with hard stresses on \u201clittle\u201d and \u201cfair.\u201d Using this take\/line reading in an establishing scene is the worst kind of revealing. Madden is not exempt from this sort of broad-brush caricaturing either, like when he acknowledges his new home\u2019s shady past by shrugging, \u201cThat\u2019s how you get a place for half the market value,\u201d without a sheepish smile or a trace of irony. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nastiness in horror movies is like a seasoning: essential for flavor, though potentially overwhelming, especially when not mixed in well. Most contemporary horror movies should be nastier, but not every horror filmmaker should posture like a misanthrope. It doesn\u2019t really help the makers of \u201c15 Cameras,\u201d an unappealing horror movie about a pair of millennial …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[48,37],"class_list":["post-1236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-horror-movies","tag-horror","tag-thriller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1236\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}