***
Directed by Sean Hogan.
Starring Kezia Cotterrell, Natasha Sullivan, Cameron Lewis, Scott Burchell.
Horror, UK, 91 Minutes.
Reviewed as part of Tubi FrightFest Halloween 2026.
Director Sean Hogan returns with a take on the True Crime documentary, a format that has spread across television and streaming, showing no signs of at all of slowing down, despite several questionable aspects that now arise including exploitation of victims among others. In this tale of a teenage girl gone missing, Hogan does little to explore the many nuances of such a format and the innumerable questions such documentaries raise. However it is in the film's back half when the film starts to slightly diverge from the format that it becomes something else far more interesting and entertaining.
Examining the case of Aisling Sllivan’s 2024 disappearance, we witness her mother and father, the police and the self proclaimed “second best medium in the whole of Bradford” give testimony to who this young girl was and the investigation into her mysterious disappearance from home in the middle of the night. Questions are raised of a possible supernatural element when a shadow is spotted on CCTV but this is soon overshadowed by other revelations of Aisling’s social media accounts.
The influence that hangs heavily over this is LAKE MUNGO, with close family members becoming fractured over the spectre of a missing child and secrets often lurking in plain sight in the corners and fringes of images. When the film tips into examining more tawdry material it threatens to trip itself up by using such dark material for entertainment purposes. The performances also seem a tad inauthentic and over performed, a real crutch when you are supposed to accept this as some form of “reality.” It is when the film starts to gradually reveal its mysteries, and its own true nature that it becomes something far more successful and chilling.
It would be a sin to go into spoilers here, so it can only be said that Hogan manages to conjure a very spooky atmosphere when he reverts to found footage. There are a couple of instances where the hairs on the back of the neck are raised in effective fashion, leading up to one of the best jump scares in quite some time. Despite its cliche inflected first half, this is well worth watching for its slow burn pay off and effective handling of familiar terrors in today's smartphone driven age.
Iain MacLeod