The select theater and VOD release of The Girl in the Photographs was a bittersweet event. Sure, horror fans got a highly anticipated flick delivered to their fingertips, but it also marked the end of the career of one of the brightest visionaries in horror, Wes Craven. The iconic writer, director and producer passed away in August 2015 and The Girl in the Photographs is the last film he worked on before leaving us far too soon. This, of course, is also a double edged sword for the team members behind Alghanim Entertainment and Local Hero – eyes will certainly be brought to the project, but ultimately it may be known as “the last movie Wes Craven worked on” instead of The Girl in the Photographs based on its own remarkable merits.
The Girl in the Photographs is written and produced by Nick Simon, who wrote last year’s big independent horror film The Pyramid. The script was penned along with Robert Morast and Oz Perkins and Andrea Chung, Galen Fletcher, Scott Hale, Thomas Mahoney and Aaron Rattner served as producers with Wes Craven as executive producer. Cinematography was handled by Dean Cundey (Back to the Future, Psycho II) with Michael Griffin on editing. Cast members include Claudia Lee (“Hart of Dixie”), Kal Penn (Harold & Kumar), Kenny Wormald (Footloose), Luke Baines (“Home and Away”), Miranda Rae Mayo (“Pretty Little Liars”), Oliver Seitz, Autumn Kendrick, Corey Schmitt, Toby Hemingway (Black Swan), Mitch Pileggi (“The X Files”), Eva Bourne (“Caprica”) and Katharine Isabelle (“Hannibal”).
“A beautiful small town check-out girl experiences the dangers of sudden fame when she becomes the artistic focus of a pair of serial killers with a gruesome photography fetish.”
First and foremost I’d like to say that The Girl in the Photographs has been plagued with unwarranted negative reviews. Every place I’ve visited, every score I’ve seen has been middle-mark or negative. I urge you to check this film out for yourself and ignore the negative things you read about it online. 90% of the people who hate it are biased as to what constitutes a good horror film and don’t have the slightest idea about how a proper feature is made. Opinion is not fact and the fact here is that The Girl in the Photographs is a great horror movie; it’s only gained negative reviews because people are cynical and they want something like The Purge or Saw, films that people can unanimously unite to praise. The Girl in the Photographs is an old school, almost artistic slasher flick that will appeal to real horror fans and fans of the genre who’ve loved the scene since the golden age of horror in the 1980’s. This demographic isn’t as vocal as the others, but I’m part of the first group and I’m going to say that I loved this movie.
Being that The Girl in the Photographs has an old school vibe to it, one of its shining qualities is its ability to make you feel for the characters, something that rarely happens in modern horror films unless you’re routing for the characters’ deaths. The way the killers operate is they find, stalk, abduct, attack, photograph and finally kill their victims. The long process of defeat – which isn’t dragged out on screen – means that the characters are forced to feel that mind numbing, tear inducing, hyperventilating fear for a prolonged period of time. Since the characters are realistic and not stereotypical canon fodder, seeing them go through prolonged periods of terror is kind of hard to watch and the way the killers taunt them is even worse. I can almost say that the emotional torture the characters go through is worse than the physical torture. People love the “small town turned upside down by a serial killer” story line for the brutality of it all – innocent, unconnected lives taken and families ruined for no reason. And this all is the true essence of horror. Remember, horror isn’t always translatable to blood and boobs; sometimes you need to be hit in a deeper spot to be scared. Though, The Girl in the Photographs has its fair share of gore and beautiful women!
Speaking of deeper spots, The Girl in the Photographs is very thematic, especially in its regard to the world of art through photography. While I mentioned that the majority of characters are marginally redeemable, Kal Penn and Miranda Rae Mayo play the two characters you want to hate, but they’re also the embodiment of the more seedier side of the entertainment and media industries. Self loathing, self defecating, masochist, holier than thou, wanna-be superstars that are actually pretty spot on for people you’d come across in real life during a Hollywood event. Kal Penn as Peter is especially obnoxious and tries to see theme within theme, but you mostly want to just punch him in the face although he is the vessel for which most of themes are revealed. I mean, I think I missed most of them here because of this. Claudia Lee as Colleen is perhaps the one who evolves the most during The Girl in the Photographs, but to me it was more of a retrograde – instead facing away from the final girl format and becoming a slightly darker version of herself.
Finally, Wes Craven’s influence can definitely be seen in The Girl the Photographs. Usually an executive producer lends a substantial amount of money to a film and gets their name attached to it as instant recognition. However, I read an interview on Dread Central where director Nick Simon and cinematographer Dean Cundy said Craven was much more involved with production, with Wes helping with casting, advice, watching dailies and helping with edits. From the very beginning when two young women leave a horror movie screening at an old movie theater, The Girl in the Photographs felt like a Wes Craven movie, especially in his later years where he did more exploratory work like My Soul to Take. It felt like The Girl in the Photographs existed in the same universe as Scream, where bad things happen to good people and masked psychos attack at random. Of course, the final act bloodbath in a big house didn’t make me forget the Scream homages either. Still, Wes Craven could see how good of a movie The Girl in the Photographs is and lent his talent to it. That’s enough reason for you to check it out, as cliche as it sounds.
My only two complaints are that the camera work is not always as crisp as I’d like it to be and that the climax leaves a little to be desired. It really gets the blood and suspense going, drops it down to starting level and then only brings it up a notch or two at the end. I was left wanting more. A chase scene. Anything.
The Girl in the Photographs is the final farewell from Wes Craven but also a triumphant big budget debut for Nick Simon. I foresee him doing very well in this genre if it sticks with it. Calculated suspense, heart breaking terror and a bloody fun time, The Girl in the Photograph is perhaps one of my favorite films of the year so far. It gets things back on track. It gets down to the essence of horror and what it really means to scare someone in a subtle way. This tactic of storytelling has been long forgotten, but I’m glad that it got a second breath of life here. Final Score: 8 out of 10.
