Engaging, Worth Watching

I found this on the top of some random person’s list of best found footage movies, but I had never heard of it before. Would it be one of those obscure creepy movies? Or a complete dud?

Well, my verdict is in. It’s entertaining enough. (That’s not a backhanded compliment, either.) Leaving DC is basically a one-man show so a lot of the film’s success depends on the (nerdy) charisma of the lead (and presumably the director and writer and editor and producer and caterer.) Your enjoyment of him will determine whether you like the film or not.

For my part, I found him to be interesting to watch. He’s very gentle and considerate and precise with his words, which I like; he’s very straightforward and conscientious. He’s not very relatable, at least to me. My social sphere doesn’t yet include any technical writers on very high doses of anti-depressants, for one. He’s also kinda handsome in a good, old-fashioned, boy-next-door kinda way (I also like my fellas solidly built, so that helps.) He’s a good main character because there’s something vulnerable about this loveless citified nerd on SSRIs being out of his depth in the backwoods. So: character? Check.

The story is dead simple. A bachelor fed up with the hustle and bustle of the city (and his love life or lack thereof?) moves to the sticks only to discover some creepy shenanigans happening on his secluded 17 acre wooded lot. (SPOILER Unfortunately a mentally disturbed ghost lives there already and she thinks she’s found the love of her life—her clumsy wooing of the lead sends him spiraling towards madness.)

Like a lot of found footage films and ghost hunting shows, this story depends a lot on technology. Mark tries to capture the weird happenings (noises mostly) with various devices. We spend most of our time poring over this accumulated evidence together. I have to say this part was very well done, and it’s very well thought out. I was never bored. It really felt intimate, like I was watching a friend try to solve a mystery.

We do get a backstory. One typical of haunted house stories, and that’s fine: the house was the former home of one man (suicide) and one schizophrenic woman (fate unknown.) You don’t really need more than that for a simple film like this. It’s more about the investigation and the inner workings of our main man, Mark.

Now, Leaving DC would have benefited from the inclusion of any real sense of danger. I think all of the supernatural stuff could have been ignored by Mark and he’d never know about it—it’s his curiosity coupled with his ego that compels him to get involved. Cool. But there must be ways to retain all this hubris stuff yet mortally imperil our hero from time to time. I’m happy with the creepy atmosphere but a few scares would have really set it off. Kudos, I guess, for not throwing in some bad CGI jumpscares.

Overall, worth a watch and I hope this isn’t Josh Criss’s only film.