Honourable Mention: Greywood’s Plot

Directed by Josh Stifter and released in 2019, this indie flick surprised me by completely turning on its axis mid-way through. As it started, following seeing a shack in the wood in which sits the titular Doug Greywood (Daniel Degnan) and Home, Home on the Range is playing, we see a table with medical instruments and something covered…

Dom (Josh Stifter) is making a retrospective video to leave as a suicide note. He lives in his mom’s (Kim Fagan) basement and has a cryptozoology video channel, which he makes videos for with Miles (Keith Radichel) but, as we get to know them, it becomes apparent that Miles has lost interest in the channel and they are getting less than complimentary comments on their videos (and a lot of down votes). Dom also has a brother (Aaron McKenna), we hear later, and although they still speak by vid call there is an estrangement because brother and mother are at odds with each other.

Dom's website

This all speaks to Dom’s depression and thoughts of self-harm – he has a gun and we see him early on trying to muster himself to pulling the trigger but not getting there. However, when an unsolicited video comes through the post, he sees a last chance to make the channel work. The footage, grainy and dark, shows what he thinks is a chupacabra. His brother, who he sends the footage to, and Miles are less convinced.

Miles and Dom

For us as a viewer it is more difficult to tell as the very dark footage looks very much stop motion but it isn’t narratively clear whether this is a suspension of disbelief thing or whether it is coding to us that this is a faked video in the film’s reality. Nevertheless, Dom contacts the man on whose land it was shot – Doug Greywood – and gets permission to camp, though Doug is purported to be bemused as he was unaware of the video. Dom convinces Miles to come with him.

chupacabra skull

What follows is a couple of guys in the woods, wandering around and drinking… to a point at least. There is a ‘found footage’ vibe up until that point, even though it isn’t that at all. They do find a couple of artifacts as they go along. A weird skull that squirts gunk (from the cavity) when Miles pokes it. We also see a skull, that they don’t, that seems to have moving fingers emerging from it and that helps add a weirdness. They then find what they assume to be a chupacabra skeleton. However, following this…

Daniel Degnan as Doug

As I say, the film turns on its axis becoming something very different – without spoiling too much let me just suggest that there is some body horror element to this and it is surprisingly well done given the budget. However, the hunt for a chupacabra has now vanished below that axis and so, from a TMtV point of view, we have a belief in chupacabra and possibly a fleeting visitation of the skeleton and footage (which is likely not real, given the film's change in direction), and also a moment with Miles where he is confronted by strangeness before we are fully aware of what is happening.

The imdb page is here.