#23 - Found (2012)
Marty is a pretty average white suburban fifth-grader, and a bit of a geek. He draws comic books with his friends and loves horror movies, a passion that he shares with his older brother Steve. While snooping through Steve's closet one day, Marty accidentally discovers his brother's secret - a severed human head inside of a bowling ball bag. Not wanting to get caught, Marty says nothing, but returns later to look at it again and finds a different head. Checking his brother's closet becomes a habit of his. The film doesn't mention how many heads he finds, but one gets the impression that it is a very high number.
This film has been a bit of an indie darling among horror fans, and I'm happy to find that it mostly lives up to the hype. It offers some fairly insightful commentary on the effects of violence, both in films and in reality, on the minds of children. Marty, despite watching films with tons of violence and gore, displays no tendencies towards violence in reality. Even when a bully taunts him and beats him up, Marty doesn't defend himself. It isn't until his older brother gives him some heartfelt but bad advice that he begins to consider violence as something that is both possible and even acceptable in real life. Horror films didn't teach him this, and in fact Marty becomes extremely disturbed by the perverse violence he sees in a film called "Headless", because it hits too close to home now. The message is clear - violence and hatred are taught to children by the adults in their life, and not by violent media.
Despite the clever and thoughtful script, some aspects of this film unfortunately felt pretty amateurish, especially compared to other recent indie flicks like The Battery and Pieces of Talent, both of which had similarly low budgets but still felt like professional films. The acting and camera work both left a lot to be desired here, and unfortunately I think that a lot of people will be totally put off by sometimes shoddy feel of the film. This could have been one of the best horror films of the year, but instead I'd call it only a very good one. Still, highly recommended to horror fans, just remember that it's worth sitting through some cringe-worthy acting to get to the good parts.
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