"To Catch A Demon" starts and finishes the tale with a physicist, his TA, and a cameraman conducting an experiment through which they hope to make contact with trans-dimensional entities that are, theoretically, responsible for everything from sleep paralysis to poltergeist activity to alien abductions. Turns out they're not entirely wrong. Time dilation is a thing. One minute in our world equals ten or a hundred in theirs. To them, we appear to not be moving at all. To us, they move too fast to see with the naked eye. Thank God for high speed cameras. Anyway, the experiment. It's a good news, bad news kind of deal. It's successful, sure. What they find, however, would make Pennywise run screaming to his mommy.
"The Hunter and the Hunted" is a fucked up story about a seemingly normal married couple that records themselves in their new (and very haunted) home and soon sends the footage along with a desperate plea for help to a paranormal investigator group. SPOILERS. This couple and their young daughter are serial killers that go from city to city, setting up special effects in a house to convince local ghost hunters to investigate, and then murder them. What does this story have to do with trans-dimensional entities? Beats the shit out of me. Admittedly I did not see the twist coming. Still didn't like it.
"Cam Girls" is equally fucked up and I will spoil it immediately, so fair warning. Lipstick lesbians run an internet site and charge folks to ogle them while they perform innumerable acts of depravity. This time, they pick just one guy, a shy and perfectly pleasant chubby dude, to be the recipient of their...attention. Unfortunately for Chubby, these girls aren't so much girls as Biblical demons possessing these female meat suits. Powers of demonic persuasion force the poor bastard to slit his own throat. The "girls" suddenly appear at the guy's place (teleportation? Uber?) and lament their lot in life right before they turn Chubby into an all-you-can-eat buffet. So what does this story have to do with trans-dimensional beings? Good fucking question. You sensing a trend yet?
"Amanda's Revenge" is the best of the bunch and tackles the problem of alien abduction stories. At a party, Amanda is roofied by two assholes but saved by her friends before they can rape her. Afterwards, Amanda becomes withdrawn and paranoid. The friends believe it's from the trauma, a PTSD thing. It's not. She moves but keeps in contact with her best friend via Skype. She tells him strange things and he thinks she's losing her mind. Eventually she convinces him that she's being abducted every night and experimented on by scary-ass entities. Finally! A connection to the first story! Yes, "aliens" are in fact trans-dimensional beings but they did not count on Amanda remembering their torturous treatment of her nor did they expect her to fight back. Let's just say a tripwire rigged to launch balloons filled with sulfuric acid is a remarkably effective deterrent to "alien abduction." You might want to make a note.
The Dark Tapes does have its edge-of-your-seat, nail-biting moments but precious few genuine scares. I found it more of a curiosity than a frightfest. That being said, if you're a found-footage fan and need a fix, you could do much worse.
Rating: 3 out of 5
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