‘Man Finds Tape’ Review: Paul Gandersman and Peter S. Hall’s Eerie Found-Footage Nightmare

A burgeoning YouTuber named Lucas Page (William Magnusen) finds a camcorder tape with his name on it in his parents’ house. The tape shows him, as a child, sleeping until two men dressed in black walk into his room, wake him, place something in his mouth, then walk out. Lucas has no memory of this ever taking place. Knowing right away that something is horribly wrong, Lucas starts to dig into where the footage came from—a search for answers that starts to completely unravel his life, and seems to involve his entire town of Larkin, Texas, but especially the evangelical Reverend Endicott (John Gholson).

A camera has caught a monster. But what kind of monster it caught is the real question that Man Finds Tape is concerned with, and the answer figuratively and literally changes shape as it goes on. The film, written and directed by Paul Gandersman and Peter S. Hall, shows us a different kind of found footage depending on the situation. We get footage from a security camera, a glossy talking-head documentary, and an amateur camcorder recording. There’s even a playful moment captured on an iPhone that quickly turns grim.

The knock-on effect of Gandersman and Hall’s approach is that Man Finds Tape manages to dodge the problem of so many found-footage films, where we’re left to wonder why someone would record a specific moment when they should be running scared. Here, every captured moment feels unintentional, stacking up the dread. But even as the incredible and impossible happens before our eyes, the real villain turns out to be our own discomfort as an audience.

Things kick up a distressing notch further once Lucas’s sister, Lynn (Kelsey Pribilski), returns to town and gets involved in his search. Having left to get away from her brother, a YouTube sensationalist prone to spouting conspiracy theories, she’s skeptical that he’s found proof of C.I.A. spooks or alien abduction, but once it becomes clear that the unknown horror has something to do with the reverend, her point of view shifts from skepticism to outright denial.

Much of the film’s suspense early on is built on the relative ease of doubting a notoriously unreliable narrator, especially once Lucas attempts to monetize the mystery for the true crime-addicted niches of the internet. Later, though, the suspense largely hinges on Lynn coping with trauma in a more horrifying and intimate way, and it’s the strongest element of the film. There are very real monsters, in every sense of the term, at the heart of this story. The ones in the film’s third act aren’t quite as effective as the ones revealing themselves earlier, but all are presented with a tangible, visceral sense of disgust and horror.