Bryan Bertino

(In French, On Cable TV, January 2022) I thought I was reasonably aware of the Blumhouse film catalogue, so it was a small surprise to see their logo pop up at the beginning of the lesser-known Mockingbird. There’s a reason for that. Two of them, in fact: After enjoying some early success with overperforming horror hits, Blumhouse expanded just a bit too fast in the early 2010s, and the quality of the results suffered, leading to lengthy delays before some movies were quietly dumped through streaming services rather than theatrical releases. Mockingbird was one of those, and it doesn’t take a long time to realize that it’s not particularly good. As a matte of fact, the longer you watch it, the worse it becomes. The premise itself doesn’t make sense, as three groups of people are gifted a video camera on their doorsteps and immediately start filming everything before being shown that they will die if they don’t keep filming and obey. But it gets worse with a lazily-justified setting of 1995, character actions that defy any kind of plausibility, impossible logistics (such as a camera with no off button, infinite batteries and infinite capacity), and a conclusion that flies off the rails of what’s possible even in a horror film. The film’s found footage is as irritating as the most mediocre examples of the genre usually are, and that also goes for the characters as well. Nothing is believable here—it’s all clumsily handled through authorial fiat, with the characters being puppets for something that turns out to have no point. Forget about thematic meaning: this is a film that just wants to be mean-spirited, much like writer-director Bryan Bertino previous effort, the intolerable The Strangers. There’s some rough competence to the way it’s put together, but it’s going to be up to the viewer to decide whether that’s enough to offset the constant irritation of the rest of the film. It’s o surprise if Mockingbird remains near the bottom of the Blumhouse list in terms of impact, fun or quality.