‘My First Horror Film’ Review
Stars: Georgina Navarro, Justyn Franco, Chauntice Green, Stephán O’Shea, Jerry White Jr. | Written and Directed by Shihan Van Clief
Lead (Georgina Navarro; Lead, Fade) is an aspiring influencer who’s celebrating a couple of milestones, the first ten subscribers to her channel and getting to tell her viewers “I’ve been cast in my first horror film.”
The unnamed film seems shrouded in secrecy, with the cast getting only their scenes not the actual script, everyone is blindfolded on the drive to the set, everyone referred to by their character name, and, of course, their phones taken until the shoot is done. Of course, they agree and Lead, along with Jock (Justyn Franco; The Nexus, Neighborhood Watch Gang), Girlfriend (Chauntice Green; Teenage Badass, Sunday’s Child), and Black Guy (Stephán O’Shea) she heads off to the top secret location.
After a flat tyre and an encounter with Creepy Guy (Jerry White Jr.; The Sword and the Sheath, You Can’t See Me) they arrive on set. Soon things are going smoothly, at least until people start dying.
Writer/director Shihan Van Clief (FOX SOUL’s Christmas Special Powered by Da Poetry Lounge, Powerade: Streetball Sonnets) has set out to make a found footage meta-horror comedy. But, much like another recent film, The Night is Young, it’s more of a hybrid than a true found-footage film. Many of the scenes are shot from the POV of Lead’s camera, but the rest of the film is conventionally shot. It’s a mixture that, as I’ve said before, would be fine in a mockumentary, but here just feels like a gimmick.
Even worse, almost nothing happens in the first half of My First Horror Film. After they were blindfolded on the way to the set, I hoped things would get off to a quick start. No such luck, all we get is lots of wandering around, shooting video of farm animals and stories that are supposed to be funny but didn’t get as much as a grin from me.
Finally, around fifty minutes into the proceedings, My First Horror Film remembers that it’s supposed to be a horror film, and someone in a mask shows up. But even then we still have to endure long scenes of dull characters sitting on swings, making videos of giant tortoises and talking about people writing mean things in their yearbook. By this point boredom had set in, and I just wanted something, anything, to happen.
What we get are a couple of bloodless deaths and an ending that feels more like they just said the hell with it and stopped filming than anything else. An attempt to make the end credits funny fails as badly as the rest of the film does.
I really hate to be so negative about a film, but I’m at a loss for how the makers and backers of My First Horror Film came to the conclusion that they had a viable script. If the comedy aspect of the script had worked, the lack of scares might have been forgivable, at least I would have been entertained. Instead, there’s just a lot of dull talk, with the jokes never showing up. And when it finally tries to be scary, we mostly get shaky cam footage as people run around.
Overall, My First Horror Film is a major misfire that manages to waste the somewhat overused but still viable idea of the set of a horror film becoming the scene of real life horrors. Unless you really want to hear a lot of pointless dialogue, this is one to avoid.
* 1/5
Epic Pictures has released My First Horror Film in digital platforms via its Dread label.
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