The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007)

The Poughkeepsie Tapes has had quite a difficult time finding a release. Made in 2007, it toured to festival circuit to overwhelming positive reviews and was promptly picked up for distribution by MGM, slated for a 2008 theatrical release. However, Hollywood film studios are fickle mistresses, and PT (as I'm going to be referring to it from now on because 'Poughkeepsie' is hard to spell) found its release date pushed back about four separate times before finally disappearing altogether from company's schedule. While the brothers behind the film, director/writer John Erick Dowdle and writer/producer Drew Dowdle, went on to have moderate levels of success in Hollywood with titles such as Quarantine (a remake of Spanish found-footage film [rec]), the Shyamalan-produced Devil, and the trippy As Above So Below, really nothing more was heard about the feature that brought them to the attention of the studios. From there, its legend, as well as the hype about how disturbing it was, grew and grew for a solid ten years before it finally received an official home video release courtesy of Scream Factory. So, did it manage to live up to a full decade of hype and expectation? Shockingly, for the most part, yes!

The basis of this mockumentary (NOT a found-footage film, but I'll get more into that later) is the discovery and examination of over 800 sequentially-numbered video tapes --the titular tapes of the title-- found in a police raid on an abandoned house in Poughkeepsie, NY. The tapes not only detailed the practices of a killer known in the area as The Water Street Butcher, but proved both he'd been an active murderer far longer than theorized and was even more sadistic than anyone could've possibly imagined. The myriad stalkings, tortures and murders are presented in an upsetting realistic fashion, reminding one of the mysterious side of YouTube and the faux-snuff of the August Underground series, and still manage to be disturbing despite the many years of envelope-pushing content released in the subsequent ten years since its creation.

Presented as one of those 'true crime' docs littering Netflix these days, PT firmly plants itself in the realm of mockumentary (for other prime examples I recommend The Taking of Deborah Logan and S&Man) by presenting a framework of music, titles, and talking head interviews to supplement its POV segments. The acting by the predominately little-known cast is superb and naturalistic, assisting the aesthetic of realism to no end. Same goes for the effects. While there's little on-screen violence, the filmmakers choosing to focus more on mental and psychological abuse which is far more horrifying in this reviewer's opinion, the effects we see are well done if perhaps a teeny bit dull.

Ultimately, The Poughkeepsie Tapes is a well-made film, still powerful and retaining its shock value despite years of hype and a substantial amount of gorier films. Well worth the wait and definitely worth the purchase price.