Invoking Yell

  Of the myriad of the more extreme metal subgenres, black metal is probably still the one most people would think of as dangerous. Part of it is the music, part of it is how seriously it takes itself, but to be honest it's mostly going to be about a bunch of church burnings and a high profile murder case up in Norway.

 That reputation casts a shadow over the Chilean found footage Invoking Yell. Set in the 90s, when the events were still fresh in everyone's memory, three young women embark out to a rural area outside of Santiago to shoot a video for their 'depressive suicidal black metal' demo tape. It's almost a running joke for the subgenre that all of its videos, particularly the early ones, consist of the band out in the woods with a shitty camera - so to use that as the premise for a movie is honestly kind of genius.

 There's a few things that the band have in their favour: by their reckoning they're probably the first Chilean Black Metal Band, definitely the first all-female black metal band anywhere, and they use EVP - the voices of ghosts, recorded on magnetic tapes - in their songs.
 Throughout the afternoon and the ensuing night band members - Andrea (María Jesús Marcone), the more serious, pretentious and, prickly one, and Tania (Macarena Carrere), more outgoing, expound on the methods and virtues of their music for a sort of 'making of' documentary of their demo tape, which is shot by Ruth (Andrea Ozuljevich), who the girls recruited simply because she has a decent video camera.

 Invoking Yell is not just a found footage film, it's an extremely low-budget footage film, so be aware that most of its running time is going to be devoted to following these goofballs around a stretch of woods as they fool around and talk shit to each other in ways that often seem at least partially improvised. It all but demands to be graded in a curve, almost falling under the 'a bunch of friends go out and film a movie' category of filmmaking.
 Whether the film succeeds or not will not just depend on your tolerance for that sort of thing, but also whether you can stand the characters; Luckily, they all give fine performances and all feel fairly well fleshed out. Having grown in a neighbouring country at around the same time and within some of the same subcultures... well, I'm probably a lot more predisposed to like this than most other people. But I do think the characters are often genuinely funny, especially the recurring dynamic of the surly (but not humourless) Andrea bouncing off the other two more bubblier girls.
 The script (by director Patricio Valladares plus Barry Keating) also has no illusions about just how much of a self-serious dipshit young creative people can be (as a monologue about tapping into 'universal suffering' makes clear), and the characters feel fairly vivid and real.

 It is a horror movie, though, and eventually things take a dark turn during an invocation to the spirits that supposedly haunt the region, the ghosts that Andrea had taped earlier.
 The twist is fairly brutal and threatens, but doesn't quite, edge the film into torture porn territory; It's pretty implausible, but it makes for some uncomfortable and deeply unsettling viewing... so: mission accomplished.
 Sadly it's all capped off by a deeply stupid epilogue which depends on someone behaving in a particularly brain-dead fashion; I really could have done without that.

 As with all found footage films that prioritize making its shit look raw, the film looks like... well, raw shit, without  much in the way of special effects. The pacing will depend on whether you enjoy the characters' company before the invocation - I suspect many people are going to switch this off within the first twenty minutes - but if you're ok with them, you're golden. The finale has all the staples of found footage (running through the woods in the middle of the night!), and while a tight shooting schedule and the lack of budget means that they are forced to keep some of the action off-screen, it still works pretty well thanks to the immediacy lent to it by both the shooting style and the intensity borrowed from real-life associations surrounding its chosen music subgenre.
 There's also a slightly exploitative mental health element as Andrea is implied to suffer from bouts of schizophrenia, so if that sort of thing bothers you... On the other hand, it's truly a minor plot element.