Kata Kuna | Through the Shattered Lens

I’ve never been much for camping.

I’ve probably mentioned this before. I’ve certainly reviewed enough films about deadly campgrounds and fatal walks through the woods that there’s no way that I haven’t talk about camping in the past. It’s just not for me. Even though I grew up largely in the country and I tend to think of myself today as being a country girl in the city, I have to admit that staying out in the wilderness has never appealed to me. I don’t like bugs. I don’t like the threat of wild animals suddenly appearing out of nowhere. I’ve seen enough horror movies to know that I should run if I ever see a guy walking through the woods while wearing a hockey mask. (Not that it would do any good, of course. I’m such a klutz that there’s no way I wouldn’t trip over a stick or something.) The fact of the matter is that I find the wilderness to be very creepy. The dark shadows, the feeling of being surrounded by trees that tower of above me, the isolation of it all …. nope, not for me!

The Black-Eyed Children, an upcoming horror from from director Jozsef Gallai, does a very good job of capturing just how creepy being alone in the wilderness can be. Kata Kuna stars as Claire, a young psychology major who is totally excited to have gotten a job as a counselor at St. Beatrice, a camp for children with special needs. Claire wants to make the world a better place and this seems like a wonderful opportunity to do so. (Honestly, I hate camping but if you told me that doing so would make life better for a child who hasn’t been given much in the world, I would be the first to head down to the sporting goods store and buy a tent.) However, when Claire enters the woods and finds herself at St. Beatrice, it’s not at all what she was expecting to find.

The camp appears to be totally deserted. The children who were supposed to be there are gone. The other counselors who were presumably employed there have disappeared. Claire walks through the camp, checking cabins and searching for an explanation. Finding the files on the kids who were supposed to be at camp, Claire starts dialing phone numbers and what she discovers shocks her. And no, I’m not going to tell you what she discovers. The Black-Eyed Children is scheduled for a late 2025 release so you can watch it then and find out the secret of St. Beatrice.

The Black-Eyed Children is a found footage film. Luckily, Jozsef Gallai is one of the best when it comes to working with the found footage genre and the film is full of creepy and atmospheric imagery. St. Beatrice and the woods surrounding it all give off a vibe of steady menace, leaving the viewer frightened about what might jump out of the shadows. Kata Kuna does a great job as Claire and what she discovers at St. Beatrice will leave you feeling uneasy, especially if you know about the urban legend that gives this film its name. Clocking in at 70 minutes, The Black-Eyed Children is an effective and creepy horror film. It’ll definitely keep you out of the woods.

“They wanted me to laugh when I wanted to cry,” Jacob Taylor (András Korcsmáros) says at one point during the upcoming horror film, The Poltergeist Diaries.

Jacob is attempting to explain why he’s recently abandoned not only his job but also the closeness of his girlfriend and his family and retreated to an isolated house in the middle of the woods. And really, who can’t relate to what Jacob’s feeling? We’ve all been in that situation at some point. We’ve all felt that we were expected to conform to some arbitrary standard and that our honest emotions were not welcome. Not all of us have chosen to go off the grid and isolate ourselves but there’s probably not a single person reading this who has not, at some point, been tempted.

We learn quite a bit about Jacob over the course of The Poltergeist Diaries. We learn that he was always something of an outsider. He was a seeker, a brilliant student who wrote stories and made films and who always seemed to be trying to discover some sort of hidden truth. We learn that he was also close to his mother. In fact, it was her worsening health that apparently led to Jacob leaving the city and heading out to the country. He got a big house for a surprisingly cheap price. He often filmed himself as he walked around the woods that surrounded his new home. He saw things in the woods and he heard things in the house.

Of course, the main thing that we learn about Ben is that he’s missing. The film opens with a statistic, telling us that thousands of people disappear every year in the United States and that only 15% of them are recovered alive. Jacob Taylor is among the missing and whether or not he’s among that lucky 15% is anyone’s guess.

The Poltergeist Diaries is set up as a documentary, featuring interviews with the people who knew Jacob along with footage that Jacob himself shot of the woods and his house. Among those interviewed are Jacob’s girlfriend (Kata Kuna) and his brother (Péter Inoka), along with a police detective (Dávid Fecske) who has his own reasons for taking a particular interest in Jacob’s mysterious disappearance. Eric Roberts even makes a brief appearances, playing Jacob’s apologetic stepfather. As I’ve said many times on this very site, any film the features Eric Roberts is automatically going to be better than any film that doesn’t.

It’s an effectively creepy film, one that makes good use of the faux-documentary format. (Jacob being a frustrated artist helps to explain why, even with things getting increasingly strange in the house, he keeps filming.) The first half of the film is dominated by interviews with people who knew Jacob and who are haunted by his disappearance. By the time the film switches over to showing us the footage that Jacob filmed in the house and the woods, the audience is definitely ready to discover what happened. András Korcsmáros plays Jacob as just being unstable enough to leave some doubt as to whether or not he’s really stumbled across something supernatural or if he’s just allowing the isolation to get to him. He’s at his best when he’s trying to articulate what he’s feeling. His performance captures Jacob’s desperation and makes him into an intriguing protagonist, one who is both sympathetic and enigmatic. You’re never quite comfortable Jacob but you still hope the best for him.

Visually, director József Gallai does a good job of creating and maintaining a properly ominous and threatening atmosphere. The woods that surround Jacob’s house are creepy because they really do appear to stretch on forever and it’s very easy to imagine that they’re could be someone (or something) hiding behind every tree. The imagery leaves you feeling uneasy and every time that Jacob went outside, I found myself anticipating an attack. The inside of the house is just as creepy, full of dark hallways and menacing shadows. This is a film that keep you watching for any hint of unexpected or mysterious movement.

It makes for an effectively intense and dream-like horror film, with the final 15 minutes providing a number of effective jump scares. It’s a film that will inspire you to take a second look at every shadow and jump at every bump in the night. It’s a seriously creepy movie. Don’t watch alone.