Movie review: Maria's Tale

A while ago, the movie Maria's Tale landed in our inbox. I was instantly interested. I love doing movie reviews. And I really liked the plot. In Maria's Tale, Maria is growing her internet channel. She likes to visit abandoned buildings. She wants more fame and she & her friends take off to check out a well known asylum that's been empty the last 40 years to see if she can find anything weird there. What she doesn't know yet, it that she doesn't even have to go to the Asylum for strange things to happen. 

The movie kicks off with the text: "The following is dedicated to the cast and crew of Old New Expeditions. they touched more live then they'll ever know and the world is a little smaller today with them gone." Then, it shows viewers of Maria's channel, talking about her and her videos. It's obvious that people enjoy watching her videos. After this introduction, we get to see Maria and how her journey towards the abandoned asylum starts. 

Maria's Tale is a found footage horror movie, directed by Robert A. Trezza and Zahary Chase. Horror is my favorite genre, so I definitely enjoy trying out new movies. I like found footage movie, though it's quite hard to make a very good one I think. I liked how the movie started. By doing the testimonials about Maria, you give the viewer an idea of who she is. You're already forming an idea of Maria and her channel. Which is a nice background for seeing her start the asylum adventure. 

I also liked to see how Maria wanted to grow her channel. When they start filming, you can feel how she wants the video to be sensational. She already wants to hype what they're going to do. And I liked even better how her friends reacted: Very down to earth, even mocking her ambitions a little bit. I thought this was really refreshing. In a lot of found footage films, you see people instantly crying, breathing heavily, panicked, before the camera. I liked how the main characters here were very down to earth. It felt like you were more genuinely following them making the video.  

That's why I liked the 3 main characters: Maria (Saorise Stuhr), Mario (Zachary Chase) and Jake (Joel Hair). I would have liked to see a Maria's passion a little bit more throughout the movie. At the beginning, it's obvious that she wants to create an excited video. She really wants her channel to grow. But later on, as a person, she doesn't come across that passionate. I really liked the dynamics between her, Mario and Jake though. I could really imagine them running a channel together and how they complement each other. 

I had to get used to George (Michael Ciesla) and Cesar (Robert Elardo) a bit more. George is unpredictable and his mood changes quickly. Though sometimes I don't see why, or it feels a bit abrupt. I like his character way better in the second half of the movie. I would have liked some more screentime for George and Cesar together, to emphasize them as a 'çrazy' duo. Because we mostly saw them separately, I didn't really get the 'Bonny & Clyde' type of feeling. Cesar's video helps in that a bit, but I would have loved some flashbacks to actually see them together more.  

I liked the plot and the way the movie was built up. Seeing testimonials twice about Maria, was a bit too much for me. Seeing the reactions on George & Cesar was a good thing. 

the felling of a found footage was captured well. I was only sometimes distracted by the sound that varied from scene to scene and some scenes ended quite abruptly. 

Furthermore, the movie was easy to follow and the characters developed well. The actions sometimes went a bit quick. A little bit more time for suspension and building up some fear would have been great. 

All in all an interesting found footage film about 3 people looking to get famous. And on your way, you never now what you might stumble upon...