The Glenarma Tapes (2023) Review

Getting its International Premiere at FrightFest as part of their First Blood strand and produced through Northern Ireland Screen’s New Talent Focus initiative The Glenarma Tapes is a found footage horror that sadly unspools quickly into banality.

Shot by first time director Tony Devlin who also co-wrote the story and script with Paul Kennedy, the set-up sees giggling wannabe film guru Jimmy (Rían Early) making a documentary essay about a day in the life of his best friend Gordy (Warren McCook) for his final year assignment.

Gordy is a fine subject it seems and a complex character who veers between rebellious teenage angst and tender caring morality. While his alcoholic mum is sprawled out on the sofa we see scenes of him looking after his younger sister and lecturing her father about responsibility, coupled with him punching a bully at college and disrespecting his teachers. Gordy’s aim is to leave his home town as soon as possible and tag along with Jimmy who is heading abroad for film school. However, his crush on studious Elenor (Sophie Hill) is one tie that holds him back.

Overhearing two of their teachers planning what sounds like an illicit tryst in the remote Glenarma woods, Jimmy and Gordy plan to follow them and tape the adulterous encounter to use to blackmail their elitist lecturers. Inviting Elenor and her mouthy friend Clare (Emily Lamey) along, the foursome set forth on a long bus journey to the wicked woods in hopes of securing the scandalous footage.

Finding the forest to be far more foreboding than they ever imagined, they get lost quickly but carry on regardless. As night falls armed only with head mounted cameras, the team of teens are soon seriously regretting their adventure. And when they finally find the teachers it turns out they are tangled up in something far more sinister than a simple affair.

Wearing its influences like a high-vis jump suit The Glenarma Tapes takes more than a few cues from The Blair Witch Project, with the jerky camera work, running POV shots, so-dark-you-can’t-see-anything moments and multiple instances of people freaking out in the forest. This proves not only that the 1999 horror is still one of the definitive woodland shockers, but also that you need to be extremely creative to make an original found footage film these days.

The acting is fine and the production is competent, but unfortunately Tony Devlin does not have the talent this early in his career to bring anything much to the found footage table and the frights and scares all fall flat. The script is part teen drama and part action horror and the much-used set-up has been executed better in a raft of other films with the any moments of menace and violence here feeling played out.

It feels like a lot is wasted in the film with what looks like an amazing location used at the beginning, then the remainder being shot in generic woodland. Likewise ideas of occultism are quickly abandoned as we move into an cat and mouse action set-up with very little tension. The best scene takes place at a petrol station where a creepy old local stereotype tells the kids the Legend of Harry Half A Head, a man who blew his own face off with a shotgun in the forest yet remained alive for days after. Sadly this partially revealed urban legend is never expanded on or paid off and simply sits as a taste of terror amidst a tepid dish of disappointment.

When the narrative moves past Jimmy’s footage we cut between news reports, TV specials and social media feeds, shifting more to a crime-thriller where the exact details of what has taken place are finally expanded on. It is here we find the one interesting idea as SPOILERS a character has been kept alive for years after and tortured, with the footage from the events we have been watching. But the moment is fleeting and had the whole of The Glenarma Tapes narrative been spun around this captive and the footage introduced and unfolded as part of his punishment with his role in the affair obscured, it could have been an innovative and far more disturbing movie.

That is not the film we are watching and instead, in true Scooby Doo-style, the evil doer is unmasked and a cheesy happy ending inserted plummeting The Glenarma Tapes further away from any horror it had. To top it all off the run time is a paltry 1 hour and 18 minutes including credits which to me isn’t even feature length. Worse still, for a film to not be able to entertain or excite for that short time makes it even more of a travesty.

Movie Rating:

The Glenarma Tapes trailer