Every small town has an urban legend, but what if you found out the most terrifying tale from your small town was actually about a member of your own family. That is where the journey begins for found footage gem ‘What Happened To Dorothy Bell?’ Writer/director Danny Villanueva Jr. uses VHS home video footage, modern zoom calls, and security cams alongside video journals to craft a genuinely unsettling film.
Ozzie Gray (Asya Meadows in a breakout lead performance) is working through her own mental health challenges while also on a mission to track down what really happened to her grandmother, Dorothy Bell. Her childhood memories are vague but she recalls her grandmother being a kind and loving woman until one day that all changed. Now Dorothy Bell is known to locals at the witch librarian and spoken about only in hushed tones around town. Ozzie, believing there must be more to the story, sets out with a video camera in hand to figure out what exactly happened. In her quest for information Ozzie discovers that what was always assumed to be a mental health break was actually closer to a possession. She uncovers a mysterious book that seems to have a dark history.
Found footage filmmakers commonly cite the biggest challenge of the genre to be finding a reason for a camera to be around for the shot. This is a bit of a misstep for ‘What Happened To Dorothy Bell?’ as there are several shots throughout the film that simply aren’t possible given the camera angles that we know about. If this is something you, as a viewer, can’t get past you’re going to have trouble with this film. For me the story Villanueva is building is compelling enough that I barely noticed these few incidents and could easily shake them off when I did notice. He successfully handles the aspect that makes found footage work best for me, the desire to get a better look at what is going on without ever really being able to do so. It is in these moments, when you are searching the dark corners, waiting for something to move or jump out that the entire film becomes tense and truly scary. Another element that really works is that our lead character stays relatively cool and/or puts the camera on a stable surface before weird things start happening. This takes away that shaky “holding while running” issue that turns many folks off of the found footage genre. While the shaky cam enhances the scares for some viewers, I found the simple fix of more steady camera shots made the experience better for me.
There is a thread of mental health and trauma that runs though the narrative. We see Ozzy on several video calls with her therapist discussing her relationship with her parents and the things that happened with her grandmother. While this provides a good spot for exposition it also seemed to serve getting the bigger named actors on the screen with Lisa Wilcox (‘Nightmare on Elm Street 4 and 5’) taking the role of therapist and Michael Hargrove (‘Candyman’) as her father. I’m not sure these talented actors were well utilized in their roles, but that’s the way it goes sometimes on a budget. Ultimately Meadows does a fine job of carrying the film almost entirely on her own with the very small supporting cast coming in to break things up a bit. Overall this film is a fresh addition to the found footage sub-genre as well as creating a new urban legend to stew over every time you enter the maze like shelves of your local library, and some of the images might just pop back into you mind the next time you settle into bed with a new book.
‘What Happened To Dorothy Bell?’ had it’s world premiere at Fantastic Fest
