Looks like haunted house movies are the new zombie movie. If you have a single camera and not much money, a smart script and an eye for tension is the way to go. Paranormal Activity failed to capture my imagination and ultimately, I thought the marketing campaign was far more fascinating than the movie but it was proof positive that having a tiny budget to work with is no excuse. You can make a good movie with no money. So here’s the Uruguayan production, La Casa Muda, from director Gustavo Hernandez to up the ante and considering the amazing success of Paranormal Activity and it’s status as the most profitable movie of all time it should come as no surprise that Hollywood is already wringing its hands at the possibility of many more millions of duckets. It features a similar ghostly premise, is made on a budget that you couldn’t buy a car with and, like Paranormal Activity, operates primarily on a gimmick. Yes, it has that verite documentary style that people either love or hate but this baby is done in a single, continuous shot.
Alfred Hitchcock made Rope in 1948 and the big deal about that flick was that it was a single continuous shot, too, but not exactly. Though it creates the illusion that there are no cutaways, fillm stock comes in magazines that run about ten minutes a piece, Hitch had to zoom into actors and set furniture at the point that they would reload the stock and keep on going. But here’s the kicker. La Casa Muda actually pulls off the single continuous shot using carefully planned camera moves and expert direction and acting. To boot, this film was not shot using high def video cameras. La Casa Muda was shot with your average digital SLR. A Canon EOS 5D, to be precise. This is to say, the film was shot with a prosumer grade still frame camera. The 5D has the benefit of shooting video but not a whole lot at a time. How they pulled off a feature film in a single take is a mystery to me, but this is a triumph for low budget filmmaking!
The trailer is fairly spooky and claustrophobic as the focal point of any given shot seems to be tight framing of our heroine as she freaks out in a haunted house. A good haunted house movie is a hard thing to make and based on 90 seconds of trailer footage, it looks like La Casa Muda manages to pull it off. Of note to horror and sci-fi fans, the recent short film that stormed english language websites, Panic Attack, supposedly snatched up by Sam Raimi’s production house, Ghost House Pictures, was shot by the same DP, Pedro Luque. Could this be the year for South American genre pictures to invade the english speaking world?
February 9, 2010 7:57 pm
This looks like it could be a real cool piece. Kudos for the originality of shooting with a picture camera and the single continuous shot, I’m intrigued to see how it looks.