- Director: Robbie Banfitch
- Writer: Robbie Banfitch
- Stars: Leslie Ann Banfitch, Salem Belladonna, Robbie Banfitch
REVIEW
Found footage is a real take it or leave it experience for people. Couple that with the fact that the movies can all start blending into one another and it can be hard to distinguish one director’s work from the hundreds of other choices available. Writer/director Robbie Banfitch is trying to carve out his own niche within the genre by taking people on mind bending and emotional journeys. His 2022 film, The Outwaters, started out as some friends making a music video, but it spiraled into an otherworldly existential mind-fuck, lit mostly by a single flashlight. People either loved it or hated it. With his latest found footage entry, Tinsman Road, Banfitch is, once again, going to test the viewer with how much thinking they want to do with their bare bones horror.
Robbie Lyle has returned home after a three year absence and while his mother Leslie is happy to have her only living child back, there is a lot of emotional baggage to be unpacked. And we get to do that with them for an hour. Initially, Robbie and his mom reminisce about Noelle, his sister who went missing in the woods near Tinsman Road. Leslie talks about how she believes in angels and she is often speaking to Noelle while simply going about mundane house chores. Robbie does not believe in angels, but he tells his mom that he will make a documentary about the experiences she’s having. This white lie is what enables Robbie to always have a camera filming while he knocks about the house, looking through his sisters belongings, listening to the music she recorded, and interviewing some of the locals. Lots of the usual ensue: shots of the camera staring down a dark stairway after hearing a strange noise downstairs, unexplained noises in the surrounding forest at night, static shots of a music box that can play on it’s own and, of course, listening to the narrator speak in an apathetic voice about everything.
Ultimately, Robbie befriends one of the locals that he interviews, and the two of them embark on trying to learn more about Noelle’s disappearance. Meanwhile, his relationship with his mother begins to deteriorate as we see just how grief stricken she is and how little support she has had from Robbie. As he heads out into the woods for the second half of the film, the story takes a turn, but the filmmaking stays the same, and Banfitch brings out his signature lighting method: a single flashlight. For some, this makes for an unnerving viewing experience as most things are out of frame, and your mind allows the strange noises to turn into something extra scary. For others, this is just a lot of shots of a wooded area at night, lit by a flashlight. Tinsman Road can be looked at as a movie that illustrates how people grieve differently and it can also be viewed as a commentary on how women are the people who usually hold the family together and the loss of one can be detrimental to the overall structure. Or you can simply view it as a test of patience and endurance: how much footage of nothing are you willing to consume in order to get to the big reveal after two hours? For this viewer, the reveal was not worth the investment.
Played at Brooklyn Horror Film Festival
Lisa Fremont
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