Life of Belle

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.