Boring Chapter
When her friend James (Michael McMillian) disappears after trying dimethyltryptamine-19 (DMT-19), the drug used in government experiment Project MKUltra, Anne (Katia Winter), a journalist, sets about solving the mystery. Looking through James' belongings she discovers his files on Project MKUltra which lead her to a remote ranch where a retired novelist Thomas Blackburn (Ted Levine) lives and that is where the terrifying nightmare begins as she struggles to escape from some dangerous entities.
Oh no, that's footage shot on a domestic video camera. That was one of my initial thoughts as I sat watching "Banshee Chapter" and for a minute I feared that this was going to be some sort of found footage/ first person point of view movie which is something I seriously hate. Fortunately it isn't yet ironically some of the camera work was so weak that it might as well have been shot on a home movie camera.
But in truth the camera work is not the thing which annoyed me the most about "Banshee Chapter" but the fact that in the end the movie ended up nothing. We get this whole build up about the U.S. government having done experiments on people and then we have James' own investigations into the drugs used as he tries to chronicle their effects. But in the end what we have is a woman trying to survive and escape from some nightmarish people; made that way because of the drugs they have been given. Yes there are some sudden frights as a black eyed figure appears in front of the camera but there is nothing special or that entertaining to it. It would be different if it sucked you in to what is going on but it fails to do so and in turn makes "Banshee Chapter" hard work.
What this all boils down to is that "Banshee Chapter" failed to deliver the conspiracy and excitement I thought I was in for and ended up an ordinary battle to survive style movie with nothing to make it stand out from the crowd.