C.A.M. * UK 2021 Dirs: Steph Du Melo & Larry Downing. 100 mins
“Found Footage’ began with the original The Blair Witch Project (1999) ushering in the style of video, and rapid edits. Incompressible images and dialogue. Few can make this style work with the grand exception of the first two of the V/H/S series. C.A.M. (2021) is one of the worst films I have ever viewed in any genre.
The ‘film” 2021-released British found-footage science fiction horror film, C.A.M. stands for “contagious aggressive mutations”. It took two people to write and direct this mess that had me screaming for the wrong reasons. The end credits came up and when it was over it was a blessing. Directed by Steph Du Melo and Larry Downing from a screenplay written by Du Melo. Charlotte Curwood, Tom Ware and Jamie Langlands are the on-camera people.
The film is incomprehensibly written with probably the dumbest dialogue I have heard in the picture. Ed Wood is a genius (I think he was in a fun way) compared to the stupidity of the situations and the actors. For instance, there has been a zombie attack and it’s 45 minutes into the situation, the lead cameraman because you need two, is sitting trying to make sense of the situation with the military. Tom Ware inanely says ”What is happening? I didn’t sign up for this” etc. This is from someone who has confronted the ‘monsters’ and I use the term loosely for basically half the film. Did you not notice what you went through because the audience did? The picture plays the audience for stupid which it is not. You can say it’s ad-libbed and natural, but that is simply lazy.
The only way C.A.M. (2021) could work is that it is a satire showing believers and those with ‘Secret knowledge’ look to the outside world. This film takes itself too seriously and comes off as being simply bad.
C.A.M. (2021) is filled with video bumpers warning for subtitles and degraded footage from moronic action scenes. Add to this the secret testimony of tapes by a medical professional that claims all sorts of conspiracies and ideas that anti-vaxxers will eat up with some thinking it’s the truth. The dialogue on those is so mumbled that you catch bits of it. Add to this jump scares of yelling people, and they believe in the disaster to come, and you get cliché after cliché after cliché poorly shot, poorly presented and executed.
I give this one star because I can’t give half a star to Charlotte Curwood who does her level best as the second camera person and looks good on film. The other half star is because it perhaps provided employment for people.
I recommend this for people who want to see how not to do a film and then plug in one of the V/H/S/ series to see it done right with flash and finesse. If you watch C.A.M. (2021), stop it, walk away when it gets too dumb then pick it up again. Later demand the 100 minutes or so of your life back.
Review by Terry Sherwood
C.A.M. is available to watch online via the links HERE