Like any good horror film should, 13 Cameras seizes upon real-world anxieties: fear of the surveillance state; fear of settling down; fear of your fragrantly unbathed landlord. What prevails, however, is the fear of diverging from wheezy, old scare tactics. First time writer-director Victor Zarcoff has assembled 13 Cameras from the spare parts of found-footage films and torture porn, and the film shows enough wit and visual panache to conceal the stitching. But by the time the pregnant housewife Claire (Brianne Moncrief) begins to sense a voyeur in her midst, 13 Cameras squanders its potential in orderly fashion, building to a crescendo of listless violence and a jokey curtain line reveal.
The film is as interested in predator as prey and Neville Archambault, as the aforementioned landlord Gerald, makes a good one. Leathery, bug-eyed and barrel-chested, affecting an underbite and gravelly grunt, Archambault is the aging strongman equivalent of Laurence Harvey’s carpark killer from the brilliant second Human Centipede. We usually find him seated before an array of remote monitors, where he serves as our sweaty, mouth-breathing surrogate, gawking unseen at Claire and her philandering husband Ryan (P.J. McCabe) as they adjust to their new home.
The problem is, Zarcoff doesn’t seem to know what to do with Gerald. The film toggles uneasily between farce and playing it straight, and underwritten scenes near the climax leave Archembault chewing scenery in the lurch. Gerald’s motives are kept artfully unclear until the very end, at which point they fail to furnish much sense upon what came before. Ultimately, he’s less a coherent maniac than a composite of movie killer tics and behaviors. 13 Cameras is most compelling when it quietly displays his methods. The eeriest scene uses offscreen space and suggestive sound design to show him soundproofing the basement. But even here, Zarcoff shows his hand: Rhode Island garage rockers Ravi Shavi play from Gerald’s boombox even though he’s probably more of a Grand Funk Railroad kind of guy.
To sustain dramatic interest, the film spends a lot of time with Ryan and his assistant Hannah (Sarah Baldwin). (A movie from an older era would have made him older than 30 before giving him an assistant; a smarter movie from this era would have made her older and overqualified.) Their illicit affair parallels the hidden cameras as a source of paranoia. It’s also a source of mild T&A, thanks to cameras in the shower and pool. Gerald watches with rapt attention, of course, and briefly, 13 Cameras appears ready to retread One Hour Photo, which featured Robin Williams as a photo lab tech living vicariously through his customers’ snapshots.
The camera in the toilet bowl and wadded up tissues at Gerald’s console lay to rest quickly any interest in his inner life. By the end, Zarcoff’s main reference point seems to be Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo’s superior, and considerably more gruesome, home invasion film Inside. To elaborate on what the films share would be to spoil the film in review. It’s best to simply advise that a baby on the way is the domestic horror equivalent of Chekhov’s gun on the mantle.
