Horror Movie Review: Confessions in Static (2025)

Is this a horror film? It has horrifying elements, I guess, but it’s really pushing the limits of what we cover on this site. The crux of the plot surrounds murder, conspiracy theories, true crime obsession, trauma tourism, and online manipulation. There’s a hell of a lot going on, told in a found footage style, but credit to writer/director Bob Freville, it does all make sense in the end.

If there’s one takeaway from Confessions in Static, it is that it tries something a bit different and that is commendable. Telling its story in non-linear fashion and focusing on multiple characters who may, or may not, be telling the truth about murders that occurred a real-life house of horrors that recently reopened as a tourist attraction.

As the film plays out, more details about what happened and who was involved becomes clearer, thanks to the interrogation set-up and flashbacks to the events leading up to the murders.

This surrounds four friends, Lisa (Mackenzie Keyes), Jason ( Scott Dowd), Danny (Jimmy Donohue) and Alan (Matt Tanzosh), who are disgusted by true-crime obsessives and decide to ‘scare’ three online personalities out of the murder house. Those three ‘influencers’ (played by Katelynn Kennedy Staggs, Brian Smith-Brecht and Nic Andrews) wind up dead, and the foursome are blamed, but there is no proof and they’re not admitting to anything.

Did they commit such a horrific crime? Or is something more sinister going on?

Confessions in Static wants you to think about it, and over the film’s substantial runtime, detail to help you make up your mind will be shared, mostly through dialogue, and delivered by a cast who believed in what they were doing here. It’s a film that wants you to question everything, including what you see before your very eyes. How many of us have been fooled by someone convincing, especially on the internet?

It’s not the only theme that the film tackles that resonates, in my opinion. I don’t particularly understand our culture’s obsession with true crime (there are large yearly conventions dedicated to it now), and I think the way in which the story questions humanities ethics is interesting, even if it’s probably way to big a conversation for a film like this.

Still, you can admire the film asking the questions.

It’s not pretty, it’s not got the best sound, it’s not always that engaging, and it’s certainly lacking in horror, but there are some really good ideas here and, for the most part, they are effective. Bob Freville has done a good job balancing several genres of film, even injecting a bit of dark comedy into things here and there. Along with strong performances across the board, it’s a film certainly worth checking out provided you accept it for what it is, a slow moving, thought-provoking, sometimes humorous character study that really isn’t a horror movie.