Mockingbird

Set in 1995, Mockingbird follows several characters as they receive bulky video cameras as part of a “contest” and are subsequently horrified to discover that they’re actually part of a game with deadly consequences. Writer/director Bryan Bertino admittedly does a fantastic job of immediately capturing the viewer’s interest, as Mockingbird opens with a striking sequence involving, apparently, the last person to play the aforementioned game. From there, the movie segues into a midsection that feels like a fairly standard found-footage thriller – replete with generic, forgettable characters and long stretches in which nothing terribly interesting occurs. It’s worth noting, however, that Bertino effectively manages to cultivate an atmosphere of moderate suspense, as the narrative boasts a handful of genuinely tense moments that manage, for a while, to compensate for the less-than-compelling elements on display (eg everything involving Barak Hardley’s grating “clown” character). There’s little doubt, though, that the unusual scenario is perhaps a little too outrageous to elicit any genuine frights, and the movie does, perhaps inevitably, begin to palpably run out of steam as it passes the one-hour mark – with the ludicrous and flat-out eye-rolling conclusion ensuring that Mockingbird ends on as underwhelming a note as one could envision. It’s a shame, to be sure, as the movie’s setup is dripping with promise and Bertino mostly avoids falling into many of the amateurish traps associated with the found-footage genre, and yet it’s ultimately impossible to overlook the nonsensical manner in which the whole thing finishes.

** out of ****