Greywood’s Plot
His videos loving curated and crafted from his home studio/editing suite, Dom’s Cryptizoid Club channel simply doesn’t have the content to break through to the mainstream, cataloguing his search for weird and wonderful undiscovered animals rumoured to exist in the forests of the North American mainland, the Northern Banshee, the Saskatchewan Sasquatch, the scarcity of any genuine footage resulting in endless talking heads speculating rather than demonstrating proof.
Their local fanbase and personal cheerleader consisting of Marla at the diner, Dom and production buddy Miles are on the verge of giving up when an anonymously delivered videotape purporting to contain footage of El Chupacabra prompts a road trip to the area where it was shot; welcomed by the owner, Doug Greywood, he says he knows of nothing strange but invites them to stay and pitch their tent in the woods.
Produced, directed and edited by Josh Stifter who also stars as hapless and hopeless Dom, trekking muddy trails for a glimpse of Internet gold, Greywood’s Plot is co-written with Daniel Degnan who appears as Doug, benign but omnipresent, greeting Dom and Miles as they rise and potentially scaring off the elusive creature they hope to track and capture on camera.
With checked shirts, beer and lo-fi production values akin to Lake Michigan Monster, the duo of minimal competence pass through dreams more disturbing than nightmares, playing about on haystacks and eventually discovering a clue, a monstrous fanged skull, but are they looking in the right place for what they seek?
More a movie about wanting a monster than a monster movie, Dom has little ambition or vision, an alchemist seeking to turn trash into something which can be monetised, yet while the shuffling progress through Greywood’s Plot is slower than might be preferred the destination is not what was expected, the disturbances of the second night in the forest taking a very different path from the first.
Shot entirely in monochrome and echoing the grim ideas of Tusk, the final act is a jarring departure from what went before as Dom’s comprehension of the pitiful creature in the woods undergoes radical metamorphosis prompting a choice considered by Doug to be “the greatest existential crisis of our time,” whether to be content with his current anonymity or rise to fame as another player in the freakshow of fame, Greywood’s Plot darker and bleaker than was at first apparent.
FrightFest will return to Cineworld Leicester Square in London in October
