The Lost Footage of Leah Sullivan

THE LOST FOOTAGE OF LEAH SULLIVAN is about the title character's (Anna Stromberg) journalism class project / investigation into some murders that occurred thirty years earlier, in a small town in Massachusetts. At first, everything is upbeat, and by the book. Leah is joined by a good-natured cop (Burt Grinstead). Together, they uncover a lot more than they had anticipated.

As she digs deeper, Leah's video begins to take on a much more ominous quality.

As far as "found footage" horror films go, this is a pretty good one. The primary ruse works well, with Leah's "project" making it easier for the viewer to suspend disbelief, and accept her filming of everything. Of course, as in many of these FF movies, there comes a time when using a camera is absurd, like when in a life-or-death struggle. It happens here too.

Still, it's worth watching. The tension builds slowly, in a casual, natural way, right up until the bonkers finale. Is it scary? Somewhat, although it's extremely difficult to be original in this subgenre.

Ms. Stromberg co-wrote the screenplay, along with Mr. Grinstead, who also directed it...

I love found footage horror movies, including amateur productions, as long as they're even the least bit scary and sincere. This has a few good scares in it, but they were too few and far between to make this work.

The beginning of this movie hooked me. I thought, "Finally! A good one!" The lead actually sounded like a competent and talented newscaster and the footage felt real enough with outtakes, cover footage, and all.

The first two minutes show her in front of an abandoned house doing her spiel about what happened in it and we see a figure pass by a window. It's brief and in the distance, but unmistakable and creepy. I smiled and settled in eager to see more.

Then she gets stopped by a cop after she almost hits someone while driving and trying to film at the same time. He ends up asking her out for coffee and much of the rest of the movie is like watching them on terribly awkward dates. There are also several interviews with other people that aren't very entertaining and there just for exposition that we honestly don't need.

She and the cop go to the abandoned house again to explore and catch some obvious footage of weird stuff that neither of them sees but we do, even though she seems to have forgotten how to use and focus a camera all of a sudden so it's all blurry and shaky - and so lame. In every handheld camera scene she seems to have absolutely no idea what she's doing anymore. It's even aimed at the floor a lot of the time. I found myself wanting to shout at the screen, "What is wrong with you??"

And then, just as bad, for whatever reason she's obviously not reviewing her footage or she would have seen the scary blurry figure in the background just like we did - and just like we wanted to see way more of.

She seems so interested and invested while looking at crime scene photos and doing interviews but dismisses anything weird that happens at while the house and doesn't review her footage? Half the time she seems intelligent and serious and the other half she's clueless and it's just a big joke to her. It doesn't work.

This is a found footage movie that ignores anything it captures and over the course of an hour and a half only gives us about three and a half tiny glimpses of what we came to see. How did they possibly think that would be effective?

It's a damn shame because aside from the absolutely terrible handheld camera work they had some great scenes and decent tension and even decent acting and what looked to me like a decent "monster". I'm okay with it never being shown clearly, just don't ignore it.

I've never called a movie "dumb" before. This one is dumb. So dumb. I don't think it's worth your time, unfortunately. I'm giving this a very generous 4/10 for the potential it had, the talent involved, and the few effective scares.

I thought it started out pretty good with a bunch of interviews to flesh out the story. There were some pretty creepy camera shots and then the whole thing fell apart at the end. It was so dark I had no idea what was going on. Then it just stopped. Such a shame.

This is actually pretty well done! Story was engaging and the premise was creepy!

I'd recommend for ff genre enthusiasts

The movie was ok, but the reporter was so annoying. She laughs throughout the whole movie,even while taking the dead woman's dresses out of the closet. I wanted the reporter to meet her end.