Confessions in Static (2025) Review
Who wants a movie that combines The Office’s cutaways and features the characters from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia? Before you start thinking that I’ve completely lost my mind and should go home and rethink my life, allow me to introduce Bob Freville’s latest film, Confessions in Static. We open to a group of mischievous college folks interviewed separately by the police. They all try to pin the blame on anyone and anything other than themselves, but one thing they all admit to doing is going to an abandoned house known as the “Decker House.” Rumor has it that the homeowners were murdered there. But when the house was reopened as a tour attraction, our ragtag college kids decided to go up to the house and teach the new tenants a lesson they’ll never forget.
Confessions in Static is a murder mystery at its heart and on paper. But the reality is far blander. If you love watching people sit through endless camcorder interviews for an hour and a half straight, then this film will be absolutely perfect for you. I’m not joking when I say that I was looking at the run time, wondering when we’ll find some concrete answers to this murder mystery. Now, you could argue that the film is deliberately trying to be slow so that you can analyze every frame of every scene. And it’s obvious that Bob Freville is trying to make a thriller that keeps you guessing until the end. But the movie fails to have any real sense of urgency or tension to keep you engaged. Compare this to, say, Matt Reeves’ The Batman. Every scene offers us a clue, a small piece to a large puzzle that is The Riddler’s plan. Even though it stretches around three hours long, it finds the perfect balance of action and mystery that slowly builds up to the penultimate reveal. But Confessions of Static at best offers you a trail of breadcrumbs that leads up a staircase to nowhere.
When you’re STILL wondering when the film will start ramping up at the halfway mark, you’ve got a serious problem. I can’t even remember the characters’ names, much less follow the abysmally slow plot. And pacing a movie is incredibly important, even more so than run time alone. A well-paced movie can make three hours fly by like three minutes. Meanwhile, a poorly paced film can make a single hour slog on like the life age of the Ents. And unfortunately, Confessions in Static is the latter. You might think that’s because we spend the majority of the film watching these poor schmucks getting grilled, but that’s not the complete reason. You can have a movie take place in a single location with a limited cast, Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse is a prime example of this. But you need to make the entire premise feel much larger than just a single room with a camera. Who are these characters? What is their motivation? What are the stakes? And most importantly, why should we care?
This isn’t to say that there weren’t some good ideas presented. I liked that Bob Freville decided to interlace the story with these camcorder-recorded interviews to give us some insight on the murder mystery, and the crime thriller spin is a unique angle you don’t often see in horror. It’s clear that he possesses some rudimentary filmmaking skill but lacks the deeper understanding to truly string together a cohesive and engaging film. This isn’t due to a budget issue at all, as plenty of indie horror movies can be extremely entertaining and successful, many of which I’ve reviewed here on Film Purgatory. And despite it all, I admire Bob’s efforts, because making a film is no easy task. There are many young and/or aspiring filmmakers who want to make their own projects and either struggle with finding an idea or don’t have the means to make their dream a reality. Anyone who can execute their idea to film, even poorly, is still deserving of respect.
Despite a somewhat unique spin on classic found footage-style horror, I can’t say that Confessions in Static is a good movie, or even a subpar to bad film I’d revisit as a guilty pleasure. Complete with a tensionless story, poor pacing, and unlikable characters so forgettable you could easily replace them with literal pieces of cardboard, Confessions in Static fills your brain with static for a good hour and a half that easily feels like a millennia. That being said, I do believe that there is an audience for this movie out there. It just isn’t me.
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