DREAM EATER and the Usual Found Footage Questions

DREAM EATER (Blu-ray)

2026 / 89 min

Alliance Entertainment

Review by Josey, the Sudden Cat🙀

Because found footage is an overused gimmick, I always find myself immediately asking two questions while reviewing yet another one:

1. Is there an actual narrative reason for the movie to be shot like this?

2. Is this the type of story where characters would realistically feel compelled to film everything happening?

Regarding Dream Eater, the answer to both is largely no, though it isn’t completely without merit.

The basic story itself ain’t bad. Alex (Alex Lee Williams) has a history of chronic sleepwalking, but his actions while asleep are becoming increasingly dangerous, which includes purposefully harming himself. So his girlfriend, filmmaker Mallory (Mallory Drumm), begins to document things at the behest of a doctor. This being a horror movie, Alex’s behavior grows more ominously erratic and threatening, to both himself and Mallory. 

It later becomes clear that there are supernatural doings related to Alex’s family history, when his parents were part of a bizarre cult. After a meandering start, the film boasts a few creepy sequences, and there are times where found footage is effectively utilized to create tension. The climax, in particular, packs a few great jolts. And for a couple of non-actors, the two leads are pretty decent in their roles (Williams & Drumm are also the film’s co-writers & directors).

Available for birthday parties.

However, why the characters decide to document all this at an AirBNB in the middle of nowhere is anyone’s guess. If Alex’s sleepwalking problem is so dangerous to everyone involved, shouldn’t they stay where emergency help is close by? And since Alex’s condition is serious, shouldn’t a professional somnologist at least be on-hand? Elsewhere, the film struggles to justify why Mallory would be compelled to shoot every waking moment, including times she’s using her PC, having breakfast with Alex, and most distractingly, when her own life is in danger. 

I guess we aren’t supposed to think about such things, but since the novelty of found footage wore off years ago, I can’t help it. These days, it takes a hell of a lot for me to forget about the camera, which Dream Eater doesn’t always do. Is it a deal-breaker? Not necessarily, because the story itself develops into something just interesting enough to make it worth our while. 

I also gotta add that the packaging is terrific. The Blu-ray cover, slipcase and mini-poster all feature distinctly different (and creative) artwork. Such nifty physical accoutrements are increasingly rare these days - especially for a largely obscure film - but I’ll attest that physical media fans appreciate the effort.

EXTRA KIBBLES

BEHIND-THE-SCENES FEATURETTE - This is actually more of a Q&A with executive producer Eli Roth talking with actors/co-directors Alex Lee Willaims, Mallory Drumm and Jay Drakulic. Roth also gushes unabashedly about the movie itself, and is also a bit self-congratulatory when discussing how he ‘discovered’ the film and made creative suggestions regarding the reshot climax.

AUDIO COMMENTARY - By the directors.

GALLERY

TRAILERS

MINI POSTER

SHELBY OAKS: A Hodge-Podge of Tropes

SHELBY OAKS (Blu-ray)

2025 / 91 min

Neon/Decal Releasing

Review by Josey, the Sudden Cat🙀

Hey, at least Shelby Oaks isn’t another found footage film, which I feared it was going to be during the first ten minutes before settling into its story. Unfortunately, the shift to a traditional narrative doesn’t help that story much.

“Paranormal Paranoids” is a popular YouTube series featuring four hosts visiting places that are supposedly haunted. While investigating the abandoned ghost town of Shelby Oaks, three of the hosts are brutally murdered and the last, Riley Brennan (Sarah Durn) goes missing, presumably kidnapped by whoever killed her co-stars. Since it was all caught on camera, the incident becomes an unsolved mystery with worldwide attention.

12 years later, Riley’s older sister, Mia (Camille Sullivan), is being interviewed about the disappearance. She believes Riley is still alive, and after a surprise visit from a stranger (who kills himself on her porch), she discovers a tape in his hand. Instead of turning it over to police, Mia watches the tape, which seemingly confirms what she always suspected, much to the consternation of her semi-estranged husband. 

When DoorDash is late.

Mia’s marital woes have little to do with the plot - nor does the husband, for that matter - and is part of what sometimes makes the movie aimless and meandering. Compelled to look for Riley on her own, the search leads her to Shelby Oaks and the abandoned prison where the visitor at her door was once incarcerated, as well as an amusement park featured in Riley’s show. Further muddying the works are incidents from the sisters’ childhoods (depicted through flashbacks), when some kind of monster lurked outside their bedroom window.

These elements are tied together at the end, but writer-director Chris Stuckmann struggles to successfully combine supernatural and psychological horror, often resorting to cheap jump-scares over methodically building dread. Truth be told, Riley’s disappearance and Mia’s investigation aren't all that interesting to begin with, partially because we aren’t really invested in these characters, but mainly because - despite a couple of effective scenes - the story is mostly a hodge-podge of tropes we’ve seen before.

The film does come to a gruesome and somewhat creepy climax, punctuated by decent special effects. But it’s too little, too late. While Shelby Oaks is occasionally atmospheric and boasts a good lead performance by Sullivan, it's narratively convoluted and ultimately forgettable. 

EXTRA KIBBLES

MAKING OF SHELBY OAKS - A multi-chapter doc with plenty of behind-the-scenes footage and interviews.

AUDIO COMMENTARY - By writer-director Chris Stuckmann.

“PARANORMAL PARANOIDS” - Four ‘episodes’ of the faux documentary series depicted in the film.

“THE FINAL TAPE” - Video footage used in the film.

“CRIME SCENE” GALLERY” - A few gory stills.

TRAILERS & TV SPOTS

THE BAY: The Creepy Crawly Disaster Movie

THE BAY (2012)

Starring Kether Donohue, Kristen Connelly, Will Rogers, Stephen Kunken, Frank Deal, Michael Beasley. Directed by Barry Levinson. (85 min)

Essay by D.M. Anderson💀

I’m generally not a fan of found footage films. 

For the sake of clarification, these are films where the actors themselves appear to do most of the work, documenting the story as it’s happening with hand-held video cameras. They are cheap to make and easy to market, as The Blair Witch Project demonstrated back in 1999. Though not the first found footage film - the deplorable Cannibal Holocaust might hold that distinction - it was the first that became a blockbuster, aided in no-small-part by an ingenious viral marketing campaign that suggested it was a true story (duping legions of Drano-drinking doorknobs).

The film's success obviously convinced scores of other would-be filmmakers to do the same thing and we’ve been inundated by found footage flicks ever since, the most successful being Paranormal Activity, which was cheaper than Blair Witch and made even more money. A few major studios have since jumped on the bandwagon as well. Cloverfield had 60-times the budget of Blair Witch, but was still a relative bargain compared to, say, Transformers.

Movies made in this style are hard for me to view with an open mind, mainly because what was once a fairly novel idea has been run into the ground (especially in the horror genre). Additionally, I automatically assume using found footage is more of an economic decision than a creative one. Most of the time, it’s a lazy and distracting way to get things done cheaply. But there have been some good ones. Cloverfield, As Above So Below, The Borderlands and Apollo 18 immediately come-to-mind (though admittedly, I’m in the minority on that last one). 

There has even been a great one, directed by the last guy you’d expect to make a horror film, let-alone utilizing found footage. Barry Levinson is best known for such classics as Diner, The Natural, Rain Man and Good Morning Vietnam. But in 2012, he cranked out The Bay, a disturbing, timely and really gruesome ecological disaster film where the use of found footage adds a sense of urgency to its story that would have been missing otherwise.

The least popular item on Long John Silver's menu.

After a brief prologue, most of the film consists of footage assembled by a rookie reporter, Donna Thompson (Kether Donohue), who is at a small town on Chesapeake Bay to cover the 4th of July celebration. Instead, people start vomiting blood and bleeding out before dying horribly. They turn out to be mutated isopods that have proliferated in the bay and gotten into the town’s water supply, the result of a local processing plant dumping chicken waste into the water. Worse yet, the CDC is at a loss over what to do about it.

The film’s body horror elements are really unnerving because, despite a premise that sounds pretty outrageous on paper, it presents the idea of being eaten alive from the inside out as something plausible. And as vividly depicted here, it’s hard to imagine a nastier way to die. Because it’s presented as a guerrilla style documentary, The Bay never feels like a horror story or science fiction, which renders the whole thing more disturbing.

As to be expected, cautionary themes run throughout the film, such as humankind’s shortsightedness and none-too-subtle commentary on authority figures ignoring the problem until it’s too late (the mayor in this film makes Mayor Vaughn in Jaws look like a pillar of intelligence). Not for the squeamish or anyone who gets the heebie-jeebies from creepy-crawlies, The Bay is an excellent horror-disaster film that gets under your skin…and one of the few examples of found footage done right.