"Devil's Backbone, Texas" (2015)

Truth be told, I had not heard of this film before it popped up as a suggestion for me from Netflix.  As soon as I saw the cover art, with it’s upside down pentagram featured prominently on a Texas state flag, I went right ahead and added it to my queue without really reading the plot description (I guess I’m just a sucker for any film that has cover art featuring pentagrams on state flags).  This proved to be very problematic to me once the movie got underway.   Essentially,

"Devil’s Backbone, Texas” is another kind of mockumentary/”found footage” type film (a sub-genre I actually enjoy when done right), but without knowing anything about the background behind the production, there was actually a point where I started to wonder if I was watching a full-fledged documentary instead?

See, the film is about an actual filmmaker, Jake Wade Wall (who wrote the screenplay for the lackluster “Cabin Fever: Patient Zero”), who, at least according to the film, had an estranged relationship with his late father, the real-life Bert Wall and wants to do a documentary about him.  Bert Wall apparently owned a huge section of land in central Texas that is known as the “Devil’s Backbone”, and supposedly he claimed that he had many encounters with ghosts, as well as experienced all kinds of paranormal activity while living as a hermit in this barren wasteland.  In fact, the movie includes a clip from an actual episode of “Unsolved Mysteries” where they interview Bert Wall and recreate his experiences, at which point I was thrown a curveball and began doubting what I was watching.  The next 40 minutes or so goes into Jake’s journey of discovering who his father really was with actual interviews with Bert’s family & friends, and because none of it felt like it was building up to anything remotely scary, I had to stop the film and double check how it was tagged by Netflix.  Sure enough it read a “horror film” and not a “documentary”!

Once I resumed the movie, it was at that point that it actually started veering more into “found footage” territory, with Jake and his friends trekking deep into the Devil’s Backbone, both to spread his father’s ashes, but also to find the secluded cabin where he lived to try and learn what was going on with him in his last years?  As you would expect, strange things start to happen to the group, and without getting into anything specific (to avoid spoilers), I’ll just say that none of it was in any way eerie, let alone interesting.

Part of the reason for that is Jake Wade Wall himself.  He’s not a very convincing actor and his performance consists of him walking around with this smug look on his face throughout the whole film, which didn’t make him the least bit sympathetic in my eyes.  Plus, there’s never any sense of urgency or concern from him, and he quite often laughs events off as they happen, thus reducing any possibility of building suspense.

The other reason why this film falters is because of…well, Jake Wade Wall, being that he is also the film’s writer/director.  It becomes apparent going into the third act that he really lacks any clear concept of what it is that is supposedly going on around these characters.  Is it ghosts, demons or even aliens?  Or is it just a group of locals who don’t want him finding something out and are trying to scare them away (ala “Scooby-Doo”)?  I can’t honestly tell you and I don’t think Wall could either.  “Blair Witch Project” (1999) worked precisely because of its ambiguity, but there was always a sense that the filmmakers knew exactly what was playing out, even if the characters (or the audience) didn’t.  Wall, on the other hand, seems to be ambiguous in his methods of storytelling, not to elicit fear (as there’s none to be found in the film), but rather because he doesn’t know anymore about what’s going on than his screen alter ego does (I won’t even mention how awful the very end is, which not only gives credence to my theory, but also made me regret sitting through this film to begin with?).

Overall, the first half that centers on his father felt very genuine (mostly because a lot of it was based on real people and events), but the minute the film tries to blend in its fictitious storyline, it reads so false that I’m left to wonder why he didn’t just make a documentary about his father and the history of that ranch instead?  Why even make this into a “found footage” film at all?  Maybe somewhere Bert Wall is looking down on all of this from another plain of existence and is quite pleased with his son’s tribute to him.  On this plain though, I found it all to be pointless.

3 out of 10 for me.