Die Präsenz (2014)

Directed by Daniele Grieco [Other horror films: UFO: It Is Here (2016)]

Found footage is a very rarely well-done style of horror. Off the top of my head, I can think of only around five found footage flicks that I really liked.

This German flick, known as The Presence, has little to offer that countless other found footage movies don’t. The best I can really say is that the setting (a German castle and the surrounding woods) looks pretty cool, occasionally there are some worthwhile scenes, and the actress Liv Lisa Fries does a good job. Everything else, while not bad, was utterly unable to enthrall.

The ending was more or less a jumbled mess of jump scares (be them loud noises, sudden camera static, or a face popping up out of nowhere), and the surrounding narrative, the tapes being recovered by the police, just made me feel additionally apathetic.

Just a word of advice – I get that, in making a found footage movie, the events on camera are supposed to be real, but every time I see “This video was located at the crime scenes. Investigators still have no explanation for the events,” I want to kill myself. If literally no one buys that it’s real, what the hell is the point? It’s found footage filmmaking 101, and the best examples of the genre came to pass over ten damn years ago.

To be clear, though, I enjoy more than a few found footage movies, but the genre is so over-saturated that it’s almost hard to take seriously anymore. Is Die Präsenz any worse than any other run-of-the-mill found footage? Probably not. But is it better? Not really.

Seeing it once was enough, and upon seeing it twice, I must say there really just isn’t any point to it.

5/10