Dan Asma's superbly unsettling debut feature, 'Tribe,' could well be California's answer to 'The Blair Witch Project.' The film follows a retired professor protagonist who ventures into the Cuyamaca mountains and the depths of Mount Shasta in pursuit of a lost sect. Updating and complicating the found-footage genre for an era of too many browser tabs, the movie carries an icy Lovecraftian hint of terrors beyond and delivers a hefty eschatological impact.
A Professor's Descent into Madness
The intrepid academic Devin, played by Asma himself, has clearly bitten off more than he can chew. His face is disfigured by a riverbed of bloodshot veins, and his failing mental faculties have left him unable to drive his car out of the wilderness. Yet he can still access his past recordings, using them to jog his own memories about what led him there. Key among these memories is his ex-wife Kate (Nicole Jones) dropping off old camcorder excerpts of college hangouts with his friend Charlie (Keaton Asma), who recently committed suicide. Charlie was an orphaned member of the mysterious Church of Heaven's Light cult; as a child, he was found staggering out of the Cuyamacas alone, but he brought with him wild cosmic theories about superior beings stalking mankind.
Expert Editing and Suspense
As head of the Buddha Jones marketing agency, which cut sharp trailers for films like 'Mother!' and 'Hereditary,' Asma knows his way around an edit. He generates a sharp narrative line and nagging suspense from Devin's nested jumble of vlogs. Venturing out alone, Devin's field research centers on an anomalous shipping container situated among the Cuyamaca's Euclidean boulders. The mathematical and anthropological colleagues he consults with offer equally intriguing exposition and conjecture. If this bombardment of footage, Zoom calls, and FaceTime sessions weren't enough, Devin's documentary stash, when viewed, appears shot through with freaky alien transmissions.
A Missed Opportunity for Pacing
So overwhelming is the rush down an archival multimedia rabbit hole that Asma somewhat loses the opportunity to use 'Blair Witch'-style pacing to accentuate the dread. Only belatedly picking up on Charlie as the story's lost boy, the final interdimensional round of exposition and revelation is a shade too blatant. Nevertheless, Asma bakes a palpable sense of disintegration and malignancy into the very fabric of the film. Our technological compulsion to constantly record, seek meaning, and rewind back toward our origins feels like the real corrupting force here.
'Tribe' is available on digital platforms from May 25.
