The Poughkeepsie Tapes

Title: The Poughkeepsie Tapes
Director: Jack Erick Dowdle
Released: 2007
Starring: Stacy Chbosky, Ben Messmer, Samantha Robson, Ivar Brogger, Lou George, Amy Lyndon, Michael Lawson, Ron Harper, Kim Kenny

Plot: When the police raid a house they believe to belong to the serial killer Edward Carver, they instead find over 800 videotapes documenting his murder. The films Psudo-documentary presents the contents of the tapes as his history and evolution as a serial killer evolves over the years.

Review: While I’d known about the film for quite awhile thanks to it’s reputation for having shocking content something only further fuelled by the film being premiered in 2007and promtly shelved by MGM, later showing up on demand in 2014 before finally getting a physical release in 2018 after years of being passed around the internet in it’s rough cut form. Of course with this legacy and being the horror coward I am when it comes to extreme gore and violence it had meant that I’d put it on one side and not thought about it until it started turning up in numerous WhatCulture Horror lists that I thought it was time to finally see what the fuss was all about.

Certainly what really grabbed me about this film was the shot of the killers home movie collection were he details his crime and whose contents we will get to see parts of over the course of the film and there is something about the shot of 1000’s of VHS tapes lined up that really caught my curiosity. Of course right from the start it’s clear that Director Jack Erick Dowdle is either a fan or certainly has done his research into the structure of true crime documentaries as this film could certainly be seen as being one of those production were it not for the numerous graphic scenes shown throughout the film. What Dowdle does right though is to present this case through the lens of (fake) experts who were involved in one way or another with the case who break up the footage from this collection of tapes to interject their thoughts on what was happening at that time.

Because the majority of the footage is shot by the killer Ed Carver we certainly get a clear insight into his deranged psyche even before he’s committed his first murder as one of the first things we are shown is a girl in lingerie being forced to blow up and bounce on a balloon something we are told by the tech appears numerous times on the early tapes before we move onto his first murder. Again while he might be filming everything we never get to see his face as it’s either covered by a plague doctor style mask / bio hazard outfit or just out of frame. We do however get to hear his voice which is kind of unnerving because of Ben Messmer either sounds like or making his voice sound like Will Forte putting the idea in my head of Forte carrying out these hideous acts which is a whole other kind of horror.

As the case is unravelled we see Carver evolve as a killer all while various experts claim that he can never be tracked because somehow he is able to change his motivations and perfectly disguise his work as being carried out by different killers something which seemed overly convenient and one of the few leaps of fantasy that the director allows for himself especially as Carver goes from playing the broken down hitchhiker to playing to a fake cop over the years he’s shown active in the film.

Not to be limited to just a series of horrible murders / acts most of which are off screen or implied and possibly to either top what had been done previously with the superb Man Bites Dog the film really shows it’s nasty side with the kidnapping of Cheryl Dempsey (Chbosky) who we see being subjected to prolonged scenes of torture and psychological abuse before turning her into his living doll named slave. Needless to say violence against women is always difficult to watch and certainly this tapped into that same unease viewing that like Martyrs had me questioning what I was doing with my time. For sure these plotline does have a pay off in the end when we are faced with the rescued Cheryl unable to readjust to life outside of Carvers basement, something that so many directors aiming to shock would never bother to include but it’s these scenes which really left me with no desire to rewatch the film once the credits rolled.

While this might not be the first time we’ve seen a serial killer presented in this style with the aforementioned Man Bites Dog still being the best example alongside the much more humorous Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon. However the construction of the film really is what holds your attention alongside the feeling that Dowdle has put some actual though into the film than being another director in that ever expanding list of film makers confusing shock factor and grotesque imagery for horror as we saw with the abysmal The Last Horror Movie