The Lost Footage of Leah Sullivan is a 2019 mystery horror-thriller about a college student who returns to her hometown for her winter break to film a documentary about a gruesome unsolved murder.
When Leah Sullivan (Anna Stromberg), an aspiring reporter and college student returns to her Letton, Massachusetts hometown for her winter break she has just one goal. Ace her class’s final project by filming an investigation about the most notorious murder in the town’s history: the 1986 Mulkayhee massacre. Thirty years earlier the family of four was found slaughtered in their house. Hacked apart by a hatchet and left to bleed out the Mulkayhees were discovered days later, each of them missing a body part or two. The severed limbs (and in the case of the Mulkayhee’s young daughter, her head) were never found.
Partnering up with a cute Letton police officer, Officer Patrick Rooke (Burt Grinstead), Leah tasks herself with cracking the cold case that still haunts her sleepy New England town. As Leah interviews various people who’ve had ties to the Mulkayhee family including an ex-con roofer, Harold (Jimmy Driscoll), and Joseph’s cousin, Margaret (Maureen Keiller) a sketchy portrait of the family begins to develop.
Why did the family keep themselves isolated from the rest of the townies? Why did the Mulkayhee patriarch, Joseph, spend his childhood filling notebooks with drawings of sinister shadow figures? Is there any truth to the urban legends about the deranged inhuman creatures that roam the nearby woods?
And, perhaps most of all, what is the price Leah’s willing to pay to satisfy her curiosity and ambition? Creatively, The Lost Footage of Leah Sullivan is stellar. There’s no cheap horror. No slick, but soulless jumpscares. No tilt-a-hurl shaky-cam filming. And no terrorized teens screaming in the woods a la The Blair Witch Project.
The singularly focused plot and tight 90 minute run time effectively keep the film fast-paced and engaging. The economical choice of using few settings as the stomping grounds for its minimal cast gives the characters the opportunity to create a lasting impression.
Take Leah Sullivan. She’s charismatic and at times, cocksure, with a bold personality that makes her easy to like. It’s Stromberg’s performance, how she boss-babes herself throughout the film driven by fiery ambition and righteousness to bring closure to the slain Mulkayhee family, that makes Leah worth rooting for. Harboring determination and steely confidence, her performance is dynamite.
Grinstead’s Officer Patrick is also worth commending. When Patrick is brought into the mix, he gives an equally outstanding performance, one with more sensitivity, vulnerability, and an eager-to-please mentality. When Grinstead comes together with Stromberg every scene between them blazes with unforced chemistry and an undeniable sense of ease and humor.
As a whole, found footage films are a tricky beast. The cinematography, camerawork, and editing are crucial to just how well, or how weakly, this very specifically structured type of movie is executed. Found footage films demand a careful balance of authenticity, unpredictability, and a deliberate see-sawing of film quality that goes from choppy and low-grade to carefully staged and precise. It’s no easy feat.
The bulk of the pressure of crafting an effective found footage film is up to the director and filmmakers behind the lens of the camera. In this case, it lands squarely on the shoulders of director Paul Odgren and co-director Grinstead, who, yes, also stars in the film as Officer Patrick.
With a cast of just eight characters that get screen time and a crew of only six people, The Lost Footage of Leah Sullivan is so much more than just another shoestring budget indie flick. Grinstead, Odgren, and Stromberg also wrote, produced, and edited the film. Let’s all take a minute to let that sink in.
The Lost Footage of Leah Sullivan may have first started off as a passion project between the trio as friends (and cinephiles), but Grinstead’s, Odgren’s, and Stromberg’s intimate undertaking in creating this film goes far beyond that. The Lost Footage of Leah Sullivan is a love letter to horror-thrillers and all the fans out there craving substance with style instead of gimmicky slashers.Grinstead, Odgren, and Stromberg are easily three of the most impressive new talents to hit the filmmaking scene in 2019. And, you can bet they’re going to be ones to watch!
Masterfully edited to appear as though it is taken directly from Leah’s camera’s memory card, The Lost Footage of Leah Sullivan is aesthetically impressive with finely tuned, sharp camerawork and immersive sound and set design. A potent combination of well-crafted writing, fully fleshed-out characters, and believable dialogue make Leah’s documentary feel frighteningly real.
The Lost Footage of Leah Sullivan is an honest to goodness chilling and haunting class act in delivering an unforgettable, paranormally tinged, found footage flick.