Paul A. Brooks twists and turns a typical found footage witch hunt in Hunting for the Hag, but gets lost in the process.
People going into the woods to find confirmation of a local folklore legend is essentially the backbone of the found footage genre, and you can tell just how aware Brooks is of that. There’s a keen attempt to change up the formula at one point that genuinely works as a swerve, but unfortunately, it’s the first of several and by far the strongest one.
Dragging us back to the start, three women, Tara, Candy, and Beth, take an excursion to Hawthorne, Illinois, to track down the legendary Hawthorne Hag and be the first to capture footage of it on camera.
It starts with the usual banter between the young women about their lives, about what they might find, and a few factoids about what they’re tracking. Beth is the expert, Candy is the local guide, and Tara is the fillmaker. Tara is taking this very seriously, and grows increasingly annoyed at her friends’ goofing around and being flippant. It’s not like Tara is a big believer, but it’s her film, and she cares about authenticity. Beth and Candy, however, are a little too light about it.
I liked the performances of the three women (Jasmine Williams, Sierra Renfro, and Alexa Maris). They capture the small tensions and inside jokes of a friendship group and show how different outlooks can negatively impact a project, even with friendship holding things together. It’s fun to hang out with them, too, until things turn truly sour.
Things come to a head when the girls go into the woods to hunt for the Hawthorne Hag. A prank goes horribly wrong, and soon, the girls find themselves in a kind of danger they hadn’t anticipated.
And I loved that swerve. It genuinely came out of nowhere, got a decent explanation later, and changed the story path it was supposed to be heading down. Instead of a panicked scramble in the dark, terror is presented for the women in the bright lights and cozy comforts of the home they’ve rented.
Then, the movie makes a visual change that is far less welcome. I was willing to give the film a chance to justify the change, and in fairness, its explanation wasn’t far off what I expected it to be, but there was simply too much wrong with that shift that went beyond the choice itself.
Things get stupid in a way that sours the serious, menacing tone that had begun to be built up. The most important rule in a found footage film about a previously unseen monster is that you probably shouldn’t show much, and if you do, it better look convincing. The Hawthorne Hag is seen too much and looks and moves dreadfully. All potential dread and fear go out of the window the second she shows up. Goofiness in horror? It can absolutely work, even in something that goes for a serious tone, but the mixture isn’t right here.
A part of me hoped it was part of another swerve, perhaps a meta one, and if it was there, I certainly couldn’t see it. It’s such a shame because there was promise in the first half that is derailed because of this shift and its implications.
The ending is also goofy, and that too would be okay if the film didn’t, in between all that, decide to drop back into its original lane for ten minutes. But coming out of that into some cryptid-hunting Avengers schtick just amplified the clash of tones and styles on display.
Hunting for the Hag shows potential in that first half. That tells me there’s an understanding of the found footage genre and how to subvert its traits. Where it suffers is in trying to push it too far and making the mistake of showing too much in poor quality when found footage gives you the way out of having to show anything at all.
Score: 5/10
As ComingSoon’s review policy explains, a score of 5 equates to ”Mediocre”. The positives and negatives wind up negating each other, making it a wash.
Hunting for the Hag was screened as part of the Unnamed Footage Festival. It’s out now on Digital in the US.
