Movie Review: BEEZEL

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: October 18th, 2024 / 03:29 AM

BEEZEL movie poster | ©2024 Epic Pictures / Dread

Rating: Not Rated
Stars: Bob Gallagher, LeJon Woods, Caroline Quigley, Kimberly Salditt Poulin, Nicolas Robin, Victoria Fratz Fradkin
Writers: Adam Fradkin & Victoria Fratz Fradkin
Director: Adam Fradkin
Distributor: Epic Pictures/Dread
Release Date: September 20, 2024 (theatrical); September 24, 2024 (VOD)

BEEZEL does something a bit different with the found footage format. While we do get a reasonable amount of camera p.o.v., the movie plays with different types of cameras and mediums (Super 8mm film, a variety of video formats) and has characters literally finding the footage.

BEEZEL takes place in one location, a sprawling Massachusetts house with a large front yard and a deep basement. It is set, however, over multiple decades. We start in 1966, move to 1987, proceed to 2003, and then on to 2013, with an under-end-credits sequence that appears to be in the present.

The opening of BEEZEL introduces us to the fact that there is something malevolent and hungry lurking in the basement, which is accessible via a number of doorways, including the cabinet under the bathroom sink. There is also a suggestion that a serial killer is afoot, since we see a man with a knife.

In 1987, we meet homeowner Harold Weems (Bob Gallagher), who has hired videographer Apollo (LeJon Woods) to document his story. Harold is still suspected of the deaths of his first wife and young son, and wants to declare his innocence on camera.

In 2003, caregiver Naomi (Caroline Quigley) shows up for her first night on the job.

In 2013, married couple Lucas (Nicolas Robin) and Nova (Victoria Fratz Fradkin, who co-wrote the screenplay) arrive at the property they’ve inherited. He wants to sell it, she wants to stay.

Director Adam Fradkin, who co-wrote the script with Fratz Fradkin, stages some good jump scares. He also has pleasing specificity when it comes to tech for each segment, with Apollo proud of his JVC and Harold using a KEM to look at Super 8 footage.

The score by Robert Disco Puma is notably effective, and the lighting is suitably moody.

BEEZEL also avoids one question often raised by found footage films, namely the fact that someone keeps shooting even when circumstances suggest they should drop the camera. Here, the person doing the filming is never endangered, and we cut away to a neutral perspective when it’s not reasonable that the footage would capture what we need to see.

On the flip side, it’s unclear why some of what’s shot was recorded in the first place, especially given issues that are mentioned in the dialogue. Similarly, while we get a sense of the house’s vertical depth, the possibilities of all those rooms (established in the exterior view) go are not used as much as it seems like they ought to be.

A larger issue is that, while we don’t get shaky-cam fatigue, we wind up noticing that we experience the same scenario over and over. The second sequence explains what we see in the first, but after that, despite disparate characters seeing the footage, it doesn’t impact the plot. BEEZEL is only an hour and twenty-one minutes long, but when the main change from timeframe to timeframe is the players rather than what they do or what happens, it still drags a bit.

BEEZEL is decent low-budget horror, but it winds up feeling like a good anthology segment that got stretched into a feature without sufficient new material.

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