Lured – review

Director: Dawei Lee

Release date: 2019

Contains spoilers

I’m not sure that we can call Lured a ‘found footage’ film, as there isn’t an indication that the footage shot was found and there are moments where it appears that the footage we’ve seen earlier has been mysteriously deleted. More accurate to suggest that it is in the style of found footage, though it is not pov – the primary camera man often places the cameras in stationary places to capture interaction.

Jeff Gonek as Jason

So, it starts with an image of a woman hanging and then moments flash up that take images from the climax. It is the 13th April 2018 (which incidentally was a Friday, that isn’t mentioned). We then cut to Jason (Jeff Gonek, Van Helsing). He is an aspiring filmmaker who has travelled to many places around the world. He has arrived in what I assume to be China, though he only references Asia, where he is meeting with a local girl, Kate (Lei Wong, note this is the in-film credit, IMDb suggests her name is Lei Wang). They have been chatting online for six months, have hit it off and she is an aspiring film writer. She wishes to show him her village, a remote location 200 miles outside the city, in a mountainous area.

Lei Wong as Kate

He gets a call from film school pal GT (Corey Woods), who is in the country, and then we see him have interrupted sleep due to noisy hotel neighbours. The film credits then run and they contain effectively atmospheric dark imagery. Then we get Jason, talking to camera, worried that Kate has not arrived to pick him up (though he sounds more petulant than anxious). As he complains, a car comes down the road and Kate gets out. It is apparent that Kate is uncomfortable being filmed constantly. It isn’t clear but there is a driver, so Jason is in the back of the car and eventually falls asleep, woken when they arrive.

sheet covered figures

Kate explains that they have to walk along a path through the woods. He notices the car has vanished but she simply says that the driver has left. As they walk they talk about his love of horror films and eventually get to the house – which is 1000 years old she says. She had previously told him that her parents would be there but once inside she admits they disappeared and also mentions that she wanted company, hence inviting him. There is a moment where she is trying a key into a room but it won’t turn (and she won’t accept his help) and he has a look around. At one point we see something move – a white sheet (I’ll come back to that). He steps back to Kate, still at the door, the key hasn’t turned and her hand is bleeding. She shrugs off his concern.

rescue

Kate takes him to the dinning area. The area smells, and she suggests that it is like the decay of human flesh, and then suggests that she is joking because of his love of horror. She gets him some water, which he drinks and then spits out as it has bugs in it. She seems to see something and runs off, he searches for her and eventually sees her in the centre courtyard being attacked. He rescues her by dragging the attacker off camera… and then the film jumps to him with her – presumably the disjointed jump is purposeful. He asks who it was and she says her cousin and it was a family issue.

strange actions

She cooks a meal for him and during it he gets a call from GT. Now this underlines why the viewer has little sympathy for Jason. He takes the call and tells her where he is and then suggests he won’t be sleeping alone that night, the arrogance of the statement is beaten only by the fact that Kate is in earshot and her English is excellent. Meanwhile her reactions are often strange, at times psychotic. He tries to get her to stay in his room to “chat” but she extracts herself. Talking to the camera, once she’s gone, he says the food tasted bad.

locals

So the film kind of slow burns – with things getting weirder and weirder. He is attacked by locals who have powder white faces, he hears knocking and sees things (or sees them in footage) including a man with a badly cut face (Yin He), who he recognises in a photo but Kate says the photo is her dead husband. When he gets really freaked she does sexually come onto him – though by then his ardour is cooled and he turns her down. So why is this a vampire film?

beneath the winding sheet

Well, when she relays her script, it is clear this is what actually happened to create the situation she is in. A woman married a man from a remote village but suffered domestic abuse to the point that she hung herself. The film then says she rose, not dead and not alive (so undead). It then says that she was driven by an evil spirit (so the corpse is possessed) to kill her husband and in-laws. As she killed evil spirits took over the village and those spirits feed on the living. Eventually the village was emptied of the living and they needed to lure the living to the village to feed (we do see some flesh eating but it is the life they ultimately eat, or that was the feel I got). They call them a sacrifice and each sacrifice creates another hungry spirit – though not every victim is suitable for sacrifice.

Kate's backstory

The trouble is that the film struggles both to draw up an atmosphere and to have a sympathetic focus for the viewer. Jason has a misogynist streak and does not feel like a well-travelled individual, his acquiescence to being tied up (whilst he was absolutely freaked out and had just been cut in the dark) was laughable. Lei Wong does give us a good line in deranged. Decent lighting and photography may have built a slow-burn atmosphere but the found footage style doesn’t do that. The powder-white faces looked cheap and the sheets were awful spirit simulacra – pitching into the most cliché view of ghosts. To be fair, when we see two in Kate’s backstory section, they look quite good, but in the film proper, they broke tension rather than built it. Though when we see beneath on one, as they are supposed to be winding sheets, it is rather effective.

tied and deranged

This then is the issue with the film. There is quite a good job done of disorientating Jason and through him the viewer, but without the atmosphere to back it up we’re on a loser and without sympathy for him we struggle to care. That said, it made an effort and it was watchable (at least for a single viewing). So 4 out of 10. The imdb page is here.

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