Life of Belle

LIFE OF BELLE is found footage horror film in which most of the footage is evidently shot by a young girl (I would say about 5-6 years old) which already is somewhat of a daring proposition. Fortunately, the children in this movie are very natural in most scenes, and this dramatically helps us stay in it. As the main cast and director all have the same last name, I suppose this is a family project, and this may have made it easier for the child actors to act naturally.

The movie's title comes from a Youtube show the girl wants to put together after her parents gift her a camera. Unwittingly, the camera ends up capturing the gradual but relentless mental decline of Belle's mother, apparently because she seems to suffer from some kind of dissociative disorder and refuses to take her medication when her husband has to go away on a business trip.

It helps the movie in setting up the horror to come that both Belle and her brother Linc are adorable. Most of the playing time is spent on showing us ordinary family scenes as they occur in any family with small children, except that they are interspersed with alarming moments of the mother's increasingly eerie and frightening behavior. Still, the increase in discomfort right up to the climax is very gradual, which makes for a very slow burn.

Unfortunately, the movie shows us right at the outset where all this leads to, thereby robbing us of the hope that everything will still turn out well. I honestly don't understand why so many found footage give most of the ending away right at the beginning; it is an editing or directorial choice I strongly disagree with.

Still, when the movie got to the last few minutes, I imagined how what I was being shown seemed so realistic that there probably were actual children with mentally ill and dangerous parents who had to face similar life situations, and it was this thought-such a fate of hapless real-life children as seen through their eyes- that struck me as deeply disturbing.

It was then all the more disappointing to see that the movie made a supernatural turn at the last moment. The horror of having your own loving mother pose a mortal threat to you as a little child is so great that I don't think anything supernatural can top it. This just came off as a cheap, cheesy and unnecessary.

So, all in all, the movie is very good at what it intends to do, and my only criticism is with the revealing beginning and the unnecessary coda. I suspect viewers with small children will be especially affected by this.

After a horrific disappearance, the release of footage from the affected family designed to help find out what happened to the missing daughter shows their typical family life which soon grows darker and more ominous forcing them to figure out what's going on to save themselves.

This was a fairly solid and intriguing found-footage effort. Among the brighter aspects to be had with this one is the great build-up that provides the kind of intriguing setup for how this one plays out. The first half here, spending as much time as it does detailing the family strife and their interactions with each other that does show them to be a fairly normal loving family that does have a dark secret hiding amongst them due to the glances and cryptic conversations that are shown to take place on the fringes of their relationship just barely captured by the camera. Since so much of the focus comes on her and her antics that are usually featured alongside her brother, the fact that the these subtle hints are dropped nicely alongside the footage taken from the security cameras that tries to suggest something else happening to the family, this one does a fairly solid job portraying the build-up of the family. As this one goes along and it starts to spell out the truth about the situation in a series of increasingly more ominous sequences, there's a dramatically more chilling tone and atmosphere that hangs over the film as the kids gradually find the behavior and outbursts to be far more concerning as they notice her increasingly crazed behavior. From ranting and raving in the middle of the night to bizarre crying fits in the oddest places around the house to seemingly harmless children's games that turn into psychologically terrifying experiences that highlight something not right in the whole ordeal, there's quite a chilling finale here that sets everything up quite nicely. This does take a while to get going as there's a rather low-key nature of what's going on takes the more reserved nature of the storyline into the main focus which keeps things at a measured but potentially sluggish tempo for some that might not be thrilled with the lack of action or overt explanations for what's going on.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Language, children-in-jeopardy, and Violence.

I've seen many horror films over the years and many found footage horror films. This one, without revealing too much, gave me literal chills at the end and made me scream somewhere in the middle. Low budget or not, this film captured every terrifying feeling of not knowing who exactly you're living with on that particular day. And especially captured the fright of pure innocence not understanding what is happening with the adults in the room. The acting is not Oscar worthy but I don't think that's what the family who made this movie were going for. Something as simple as a little girl wanting to create her own YouTube channel can accidentally hone in on the destruction of the entire family dynamic.

I don't write reviews often, but I was impressed with how disturbing this movie was. It filled me with angst-that lump in the back of your throat feeling. Syrenne Robinson plays the main character, Belle who pulled at my heart strings, with her love for her brother and her entire family. I later looked her up on IMDB to find that this is her first movie (along with most of the cast)..again, impressive. The movie explores mental health issues and the reality of what some kids and families deal with on a daily basis. The found footage is mostly from the perspective of the young girl, Belle and how children try to cope in difficult situations.

I enjoyed the movie and found the ending satisfying. Most FF endings leave you feeling cheated, but this one did not. There wasn't a massive M. Night Shyamalan twist, but it was still great.

One criticism is that for most of the movie, nothing scary really happened, a common issue in FF. It may apply here too. I caught only one spooky instance before the final scenes. Despite this, it contributed well to the buildup for the ending. In hindsight, the lack of activity added to the final disposition.

All in all, I recommend it. The child actors were impressive, possibly the best I've seen for their ages. They never seemed like they were pretending or acting.