The Poughkeepsie Tapes

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Year:	2007
Country of origin:	USA
Director:	John Erick Dowdle
Genre:	Docu-horror
Starring:	Stacy Chbosky, Iris Bahr
Rating:	4/5
IMDB link:	http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1010271/
Tagline:	The Terror is Real
Favourite line:	"Yes, my master."

Documentary style horror is nothing new, but this is one of the best of the bunch.

The plot:
Raiding a house in New York suburbia, police investigators discover a treasure trove of VHS tapes. Containing over 2,000 hours of recordings, the tapes detail the gruesome, sadistic and often times fetishistic behaviour of a serial killer who has eluded the authorities for many years.
Complex methodologies, which switch constantly, no clear preference for gender of age of victim, multiple locations and a detailed knowledge of how to effectively dispose of a body, make him something of a master criminal.
The main bulk of the recordings focus on Cheryl Dempsey, a young woman kidnapped walking home from college.
Imprisoned in his cellar, she is humiliated, tortured and sexually abused over a period of several years, before finally being set free when the police conduct the raid.
Returned to her family, Cheryl struggles to resume a normal existence, and soon takes her own life, leaving a note explaining how much she loved her master, a master still on the loose, still hunting, still recording……
Can the police catch him before he kills again?

Very low budget, the writer / director Dowdle makes use of the documentary style to mask the minimal production values.
The story is delivered by way of talking heads, intercut with scenes played out from the tapes, and it’s very effective, having very much the feel of a ‘true crimes’ documentary.
It’s got quite the reputation, this, amongst horror circles and, whilst I can see why it has the capacity to unnerve, it wasn’t quite the tough watch I imagined. Yeah, the sadism is nasty as hell, but if you’ve stomached Hostel, Saw and their ilk, you can certainly handle this.
One scene did provoke a response, though. A still camera-shot, close up on Cheryl Dempsey’s face, eyes bulging wildly, clearly terrified whilst, behind her, something ghastly crawls into the room on all fours.
Genuinely heart-stopping, it set the blood pumping, and no mistake.
Hard to get hold of, this, it is still yet to be released on DVD, and is unlikely to show up on Film Four any time soon, but those into ‘extreme’ cinema would do well to track it down through more unorthodox means.
Liked it.