Moth is a Hungarian mystery-horror film that combines both the found footage genre and a narrative cinematography found in standard horror movies coming from screenwriter József Gallai (Echoes [2018]), who directed it alongside with Gergö Elekes (Bodom [2014]) releasing the movie through Wild Eye Releasing. It is uncommon for found footage films to incorporate the narrative format into their production, and in this movie, it serves a wrap-around version, similar to those found in an anthology flick.
Moth opens with short found footage clip of a terrified woman holding a camcorder in the forest at night, stalked by something or someone. unearthly clicking sound is heard in the distance screams are heard, then silence as the camera fades out. Then transition shot of a university lecturer hall in London, in narrative scene where Thora (Lídia Szabó) doing a presentation on the entire theory of Mothman, explaining sightings not centralized rather worldwide and date back centuries. She goes on to theorize that it’s perhaps a mythical beast or strangely a military experiment, which doesn’t fit into the existing folklore for centuries. Then another quick switch diving back into found footage as Thora and her grumpy student Adam (József Gallai) travels to Hungry to try capturing proof of the Mothman. Their filming methodically with varied of devices, a handheld camcorder, car mounted camera, and a webcam for a video chat session (obvious padding the run time). A major twist exists in the final act, but if you can get past all the endless dialogue, dull pacing then you might find the ending very interesting.
The dialogue comes across very forced, and the two lead characters Thora and Adam, never appear to have any chemistry, even mutual, there’s absolutely nothing in delivery as natural. Next the distracting, style of blending both narrative storyline with the footage found, they can’t and don’t work together, the narrative destroys all illusion that footage found is actually real, it goes even further by incorporating background music, all of it leading the audio quality appears more professional. Sadly, that direction, leads to the movie dire sequences, and any wonderful cinematography of scenic forests, landscape of Hungary becomes lost too.
When it comes to the various cryptozoology, myths, and even urban legends, the horror genre, does those topics great service, and frankly the Found Footage genre does a fine job of exploring those topics nicely. However, for Moth, the fatal flaw in the movie comes from the incorporation of the narrative format, it ruins the illusion, the filmmakers need to choose one or the other, not both, hence that mixed with the background music and poor dialogue sadly cratered this film.
TAGLINES:
- The truth is always scarier
- The legend has returned
- Have you seen it?
https://www.facebook.com/moththemovie
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4482572/
IMDb Rating: 3.6/10
Baron’s Rating: 3.0/10