POLAROID

US/Norway, 2019, 85 minutes, Colour.
Kathryn Prescott, Tyler Young, Samantha Logan, Keenan Tracy, Priscilla Quintana, Javier Botet, Mitch Pileggi, Grace Zabriskie.
Directed by Lars Klevberg.

This feature film is based on a short film written and directed by Lars Klevberg. He was to go on to make the 2019 remake of Child’s Play.

The film is a variation on so many horror films, this time a mysterious camera, a specialty from the past, which has a violent history, is possessed by a strange entity who wreaks violence on anyone/everyone who is photographed by the camera.

There is a prologue with a young woman finding the camera, asking her friend to take a glamour photo of her, a mysterious shadow in the photo, the young woman then gruesomely killed.

The action then moves to another focus on a young student who is brought the camera as a gift by her boyfriend – his photo taken, his gruesome death. The main action focuses on a group of students, friends of the central young woman, a number of photos taken, a succession of grim deaths, and some researching into the origins of the camera. There is also a sheriff involved in the investigations.

The research is quite complex. It leads back to the camera being owned by a Professor who is alleged to have wrought vengeance on people who bullied his mentally disabled daughter. Eventually, the students interview his wife and find that the camera actually belonged to the daughter. It is also revealed that the father had sexually abused the daughter and was covering his crimes by his accusations – including accusations in the past against the sheriff as one of the attackers. And the sheriff is killed.

A lot of complications in interpersonal relationships with the group, fears, suspicions – and continued successions of death until the camera and the strange entity which appears for the killings, is exposed like film and burns, the camera thrown into the river.

A horror film designed for a younger audience.