Leaving DC is a 2012 found footage horror film written, directed by, and starring Josh Criss (The Caretaker, The Flyingest Flying). It also stars Karin Crighton (Some Assembly Required, Checking Out) as the only other actor seen on screen. Jeff Manney (The Caretaker) and Cynthia E. Jones (9 Items Or Less) put in roles as unseen characters that lend their voices to the narrative.
This film tells the story of a man who is part of an active OCD support group that decides to leave the overwhelming noise, chaos, and uncertainty of city life in our nation’s capital for the more quiet environs of the woods of rural West Virginia. He sends daily updates to his group in the form of video clips.
Things get hella weird.
What I liked most about this is how subtle the horror is. No jump scares at all (thank god!), and while the things that keep happening to the protagonist do get kind of repetitive, they are genuinely frightening occurrences when taken in context.
Slight spoiler here, but imagine you’re in a secluded mansion in the woods, no one around for miles and miles, and you hear someone playing a haunting melody on a flute outside your window at 3AM every night…
Weird, creepy, unhinged stuff like this keeps happening to the protagonist, and it’s pretty scary when you take it in context, if not slightly repetitive.
I love horror like that, where it’s all about slowly building up a pervasive sense of dread, where the antagonist is just outside of perception, always on the edges, never actually seen, but strongly FELT.
A very slow burn found footage film with only two actors seen in it for the entire runtime. It kind of just ENDS, but I liked the ambiguity of the fate of the lead character. Something absolutely happens to him, but you’re not entirely sure what. And what happens in the last couple of frames of the film is super creepy, on some ‘wait, how is this camera moving like this?!?’ type stuff.
I slogged through the first 25 minutes or so of admittedly boring prerequisite exposition, and it became downright INTRIGUING afterwards. I genuinely wanted to know what was happening to this guy.
For a one man show, this was fairly well done, and a downright frightening reminder of why city life > lone scary mansion in the woods life.
6/10 for really subtle, pervasive, creepy horror
