One of the best horror films of the year is a found footage film about the anxiety of being seen, and the only way to see it is at rare theatrical screenings
It has been 25 years since Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick shocked audiences with their record-breaking indie found footage film The Blair Witch Project (1999). The brainchild of two film students at the University of Central Florida became a cultural phenomenon due to a marketing strategy that utilized the advent of the internet to convince audiences that the events it depicted were real. Many thought the actors were truly missing and that the Blair Witch legend was true, thanks in large part to two mockumentaries — The Burkittsville 7 and Curse of the Blair Witch — made in conjunction with the film’s release. Ten years later, Paranormal Activity replicated this success. The internet had come a long way, so audiences were more privy to what was real and what was fake. Even still, Oren Peli’s 2007 film garnered so much notoriety from early screenings that it was being touted as the “scariest film of all time” before wide release. Audiences in 2009 were prompted to “demand” the film play in their city in order to see it. That word-of-mouth campaign found success that no marketing budget could have bought. Whether or not the events in either of these films were real, audiences wanted to see them, and they knew they had to see it in a theater.
It would be hard to replicate the success of either of these found footage films today. Directors Rachel Kempf and Nick Toti know this, but that didn’t stop them from trying. The filmmaking duo from Kirksville, Missouri, are responsible for It Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This, an independent found footage mockumentary that is taking the horror film festival circuit by storm. Though this is the first time they have achieved widespread festival attention, Kempf and Toti are no strangers to filmmaking; they have been making documentaries and short films for the better part of 20 years. They are also no strangers to horror. In addition to filmmaking, they run DieDieBooks, a publishing company focused on releasing books about scary movies written by horror fans. Kempf attributes this love for horror to reading a lot of Goosebumps and watching Are You Afraid of the Dark? as a kid. Toti credits renting The Shining at Blockbuster in his teenage years and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre at his college library. Like so many hardcore horror fans, the pair found their own early gateways to a genre that increasingly infiltrated their minds over the years.
It Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This is a film predicated on the Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity models, filtered through a modern lens. In the film, Kempf and Toti play fictionalized versions of themselves, horror-loving documentary filmmakers dead set on making the next successful scary movie. They purchase a duplex for next to nothing that they plan to use as the setting for their new film — something that the real-life filmmakers also did, adding to the layers of metatextuality. Soon after, they begin to experience odd encounters, such as random strangers standing outside staring at the duplex and a mysterious mural, referred to as the “Hellmouth,” appearing on one of the walls of the home. These occurrences send the filmmakers down a path of discovery that simultaneously excites and terrifies them.
Kempf and Toti know they cannot trick their audience into believing the film is real, so they opt to lean heavily on two of the elements that made The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity so successful: exclusivity and confusion. If this film is renowned for anything, it is its strategic theatrical release. The filmmakers have vowed never to release the film online or in any streaming capacity, electing instead to only ever screen the film in a theater. The communal viewing experience of the film is pivotal to its success as a horror document. Kempf and Toti have stated that part of this choice to restrict the distribution of It Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This was because of how much of their own lives they reveal in the film’s text. The audience will find themselves empathizing with Rachel and Nick, disagreeing with Rachel and Nick, borderline hating Rachel and Nick. The line between the characters and the real filmmakers is indistinct, which only contributes to the film’s intrigue.
This sense of intrigue is what convinced me to drive down to Philadelphia to catch the sold-out October 1 screening at PhilaMOCA. The line outside the door was abuzz with conversation. “I have a friend who saw it at TIFF.” “I think it’s just a gimmick. Why not just release it online?” The air in the theater prior to the screening was tense; no one knew what to expect. Before the film, the audience was led in a pre-recorded breathing exercise, voiced by co-director Nick Toti, in an attempt to establish a sense of trust and community in the room. Then the film began. Gimmick or not, the audience was all in on It Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This. A mix of curiosity and captivation made it so that you could hear a pin drop during one of the film’s extended periods of silence. Did the silence last 30 seconds? Five minutes? One hour? The reverence for the filmmakers’ intended viewing circumstances was a reassuring reminder of the power of communal moviegoing amid an influx of films being dumped on streaming services.
In fact, the film plays like a testament to the particular pressures that come along with being a filmmaker in the streaming era. The idea for the film came to Kempf and Toti after they got tired of being cooped up in their Los Angeles apartment during lockdown. The urge to make something that would be seen was strong so they decided to move to rural Missouri to make a horror film. The two did so with a script in mind — one for a horror film called Homebody, penned by Kempf, which they have since shot — before they decided to go the semi-autobiographical route, integrating old home video footage and information about their marriage, divorce, and remarriage into their film. In an interview on the Nightmare Junkhead podcast, the duo address the unique challenge of putting so much of themselves into a film. “We’re [both] attention-hungry, attention-averse people.” Toti states. “The movie, in a way, is about that anxiety.” Kempf adds, “You want to be seen; you don’t want to be stared at.”
This dichotomy is mirrored in the film. When strangers start staring at Rachel and Nick’s new home, their initial reaction is one of gleeful interest. They pick up the camera and immediately start filming, without a thought as to why they are capturing this footage or what it all might mean. However, when more people begin to gather outside, silently watching in some sort of trance, the filmmakers feel threatened and become defensive. In what is probably the film’s most chilling sequence, the filmmakers follow one of these “watchers” until she comes to and has a breakdown because of the aggressive nature in which she is being filmed. It is a manifestation of the invasion of privacy that seems to horrify Kempf and Toti.
The film is full of these subtly chilling moments, when fun turns to fear. Because the characters know they are in a horror movie, they actively pursue scenarios most sane protagonists would run away from. They hold a seance after there are signs that their new house is haunted. They seem unbothered at discovering invasive photographs of their home and friends’ homes away from the duplex. It allows for a fun bond between audience and creator; everyone seeing the film is there to see a horror movie, and the filmmakers are there to make one. However, this bond is halted anytime the audience questions just how real these on-screen personas are. This is where the confusion element of The Blair Witch Project’s marketing comes into play. Just like how audiences in 1999 were doubting the authenticity of what they were seeing, I found myself unsure of just how much truth was behind It Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This’ set-up and eventual pay-off. The misinformation on display in the film hints at a greater horror that Kempf and Toti obviously grapple with. The filmmakers are proudly anti-social media, and in a decade that has seen its fair share of falsifications — whether in the form of deep fakes or interviews on The Joe Rogan Experience — one must ask if calumny and misrepresentation is on its way to becoming its own new brand of horror.
What is it that makes a screening of It Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This so special? Is it knowing that one might very well never get to see the film again? Is it the voyeuristic view into the lives of its creators? Is it the cheeky references to other horror films? The fun interplay of misinformation and reality? Any of these answers could ring true for any individual viewer. Now, a month after seeing the film, with no chance of seeing it again, It Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This plays like a haunting memory in my mind. It’s like a campfire story I remember being told as a kid. The aspects of the film I find most fascinating lie within its attempts to answer two of the most insoluble questions posed by found footage films: why do these characters keep filming, and who is watching the footage? In this case, we know both answers. Rachel Kempf and Nick Toti are filming because they want to make a horror movie that is seen by us. But they don’t want us to stare for too long.
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