Given that it overtly references two of my favourite authors (HP Lovecraft and Hunter S Thompson), I really should have liked Banshee Chapter more than I did.
It's one of those frustrating little works that's so close to being worthy of being called a "cult classic", but falls just short in the final reckoning.
Journalist Anne Roland (Katia Winter aka Katrina Crane in Sleepy Hollow) is investigating the disappearance of her old university sweetheart James Hirsch (Michael McMillian aka Steve Newlin in True Blood), who had been looking into the drugs used by the CIA in the infamous MKUltra "mind control" experiments.
Her quest eventually leads her, via the ever-intriguing phenomena of "numbers stations", to gonzo journalist Thomas Blackburn (Ted Levine aka Buffalo Bill from Silence Of The Lambs), who invites her to try some 'mind-altering drugs' with him and his 'pharmacist', Callie (Jenny Gabrielle).
Weird shit goes down at their 'party', prompting Anne and Blackburn to pay a visit to Callie's house. There they discover she has learned the location of the secret bunker where the MKUltra experiments were performed.
And so they head out into the desert to explore the long-abandoned bunker. In the middle of the night...
A blend of 'found footage' with proper movie making, Banshee Chapter manages to keep the balance right, and blends in enough 'genuine' conspiracy theory to pique my interest, especially when they hammer home - by directly referencing - the fact that this story is a contemporary twist on HP Lovecraft's From Beyond (famously made into Stuart Gordon's glorious movie of the same name).
The documentary footage that splices in to Anne's narrative reminded me of The Atticus Institute, and as James attends the mythical 'Atticus University', I wonder if I'm missing some hidden link here beyond the thematic.
Aided by some solid special effects, the horror of Banshee Chapter comes in a mix of cheap jump scares and some genuinely creepy, atmospheric work, but where the film seriously stumbles is with Ted Levine's character, Thomas Blackburn.
He's such an obvious clone of Hunter S Thompson (particularly the gonzo author's Raoul Duke persona as seen in Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas) that it isn't funny. It simply jars, shattering the verisimilitude the filmmakers were craving.
I know the film tries to justify this in its denouement, but really more originality should have been put into such a key character so that we aren't constantly thinking "but that's Hunter S Thompson".
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