Review: ‘Anacoreta’ leans into tropes until the very end

Found footage is like a box of (expired) chocolates: you never know what you’re gonna get (maggots, probably). Writer-director Jeremy Schuetze gives you everything you could possibly want in a found footage film, unapologetically leaning into genre traps and conventions, with Anacoreta. He celebrates the craft, relishing in the shaky camera, the blurry images caught in darkness, and the tight runtime. Along with co-writer Matt Visser, Schuetze opts for expectation—until the very last moment, when he yanks the rug from under your feet. You won’t see it coming.

Antonia (Antonia Thomas) and her friends are making a horror movie. But it’s not your ordinary ho-hum horror movie. It’s experimental in every way, from how it’s shot to the use of cloying darkness. It seems, though, that the group, also comprised of Jeremy (Schuetze), Matt (Visser), and Jesse (Jesse Stanley), clashes over what the film should be and how it should look. That early tension lays the groundwork for the greater conflicts that emerge out of the unknown, that there’s something sinister out there in the woods, creeping around tree trunks and just waiting for nightfall. When that something finally crawls out of the darkness, they won’t see it coming.

As production progresses, tempers run high. No one can seem to agree on this shot or that take. Antonia has had about enough of her collaborators, and the creative differences begin fracturing their friendships. That’s nothing compared to what unravels when actual evil emerges from the woods. Their already tenuous emotional states careen out of control and lend easily as the stakes ratchet into the stratosphere. Before the credits roll, their low indie film won’t be the only thing that’ll be slaughtered beyond recognition.

Schuetze and Visser pen a script of traditional jump scares and an unimpressive story. But you should question everything—every line of dialogue, every bump in the night, and every suspicious glance. What you think you know isn’t exactly so. Giving Anacoreta this fake facade forces the audience to focus their attention, frame by frame. Thomas leads with a particularly commanding and magnetic performance; her presence loops you into the story, and you just can’t look away. Everything else, from the camera work to the other performances, is as one might expect, but the payoff in the last few minutes is worth the calculated antici…pation.

Jeremy Schuetze’s Anacoreta will be the most polarizing found footage film of the year, alongside another indie, Don’t Look in the Dark. Sure, you have plenty of reliable tropes and cliches, but it’s also a ton of fun and makes for a horrifying Friday night watch. There’s nothing quite like conventions being totally flipped on their heads.

Anacoreta is out now on VOD.