Phoenix Forgotten

While I don't think it's quite strong enough to revive the dormant "found footage" horror genre, Phoenix Forgotten is one of the better entries in the genre we've gotten in a while.  It mixes fact with fiction, and does a fairly good job of creating a documentary atmosphere.  Sure, there's some sketchy acting on display at times, and the movie mixes up some of the details (part of the movie is set in March 1997, and two of the characters are talking about the Robert Zemeckis film Contact, which was released in July of that year), but it does have an actually intriguing mystery at the center of the film.

On March 13th, 1997, thousands of people claimed to see a triangular formation of lights in the sky over Phoenix, Arizona.  Some reported seeing stationary lights hovering over Phoenix, which was later identified by the Air Force as flares being dropped from an air craft performing exercises at the nearby Barry Goldwater base. But there were other reports of the triangular formation passing over Arizona towards Nevada.  The eyewitness accounts achieved national headlines, and even the governor of Arizona famously held a press conference where he made fun of the incident, by saying they had captured the person responsible, and had a staff member walk on stage dressed in an alien costume.  Oddly enough, years later, that same governor claimed that he saw those lights in the sky, and said he had no explanation for what they were.

This real life event serves as the jumping off point for the film, as first time director and co-writer Justin Barber crafts a Blair Witch-style story about a group of teens who go missing while trying to investigate those lights.  But the movie actually manages to go an extra mile that I appreciated.  Instead of just focusing on those missing teens, the film actually spends a lot of time with their grieving parents, who for the past 20 years or so have been trying to figure out and deal with the disappearances.  This is an angle we don't usually get in these kind of movies, and it does give the story a more intimate and dramatic tone.  We get to see a lot of "before and after" moments, and how the disappearance of the children have affected their personal lives.  I actually kind of found myself more involved with these scenes, rather than the stuff about the three kids venturing into the desert to learn the truth.

The leader of the three missing kids is Josh (Luke Spencer Roberts), a young man obsessed with filmmaking and The X-Files, who naturally becomes fascinated when he happens to see those lights in the sky during the evening of his six-year-old sister's birthday party.  With the help of two of his friends, he ventured into the desert for information, and was never seen or heard from again.  At this point, the movie kind of splits in two directions.  In the main narrative, we have Josh's now-adult sister, Sophie (Florence Hartigan), returning to her hometown to make a documentary about her brother's disappearance.  Here is where we get the background information from the parents, friends, and local police about the investigation.  She also uncovers some of her brother's old video footage, which showcases his own search for the truth.  As she uncovers more videos, she eventually pieces together what may have happened.

Phoenix Forgotten is constantly blurring the line between reality and fiction, as the movie does interview some actual locals about the events of that night 20 years ago and what they saw, as well as some archival news footage coverage.  It's an effective approach, and Barber does a fairly decent job of not making the fictional stuff stick out too much.  We can definitely tell when we are watching something real and something staged, but the "staged" sequences are filmed in such a way that it doesn't feel like it's out of place.  Yes, we do get some moments where we don't know why Josh (or whoever) might be filming what's going on at the moment, but this is a common problem with found footage films.  At least it didn't distract me too much, and other than some moments near the end, the infamous "shaky cam" style that is a necessary evil in these films is kept to a minimum. 

I think where this movie succeeds where so many films just like it have failed is that it's not actually about the doomed kids.  Rather, it's about how the disappearance of the kids have impacted everyone else, and the search for answers.  Yes, the last half of the film is devoted to "lost footage" that explains just what happened to the missing teens, and it's pretty much exactly what you expect.  In fact, it's what I thought the whole movie was going to be walking in.  But outside of all this, the movie does find a few unique angles, and even when it is showing us what we have seen before, it does so in a way that is kind of genuinely creepy and suspenseful at times.  Yes, it could be argued that the whole thing is essentially a clone of the original Blair Witch, but it's not boring.

Phoenix Forgotten is the kind of movie where you know where everything is leading up to, but you still have fun going along for the ride.  I would love to see what these filmmakers could do with an actual budget and a more original plot.  They already have the support of Ridley Scott (who produced this film), so hopefully he will see their potential and give them a chance.

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