Butterfly Kisses, Found Footage Hoax?

Hoax? Maybe. Urban legends are prime material for documentary film makers. One can't blame a local film maker for going out and creating a documentary on a local urban legend. Uh oh...if your documentary video leads to a found footage film ten years later...well, you may have suffered the same fate as Amelia Earhart or D.B. Cooper. In 2018's "Butterfly Kisses" you will learn of the fate of a local Maryland film student who decided to get to the bottom of an urban legend. The Maryland settings and cast would have made Don Dohler proud.

Pretty film student Sophia (Rachel Armiger) and her trustee cameraman Feldman (Reed DeLisle) embark on a class project to document a local legend, Peeping Tom. This specter haunts an abandoned B&O Railroad tunnel. Legend has it, much like "Candyman," if you peer down the tunnel at midnight without blinking, the thing will appear to you. Even worse, every time you blink the  fiend will get nearer until...well you'll see. You can guess what happens and now our film-making duo must deal with a spooky legend drawing nearer and nearer to them every time they blink. As Sophia and Feldman get increasingly unhinged something otherworldly draws near. Then...no spoilers here, but it is quite horrifying.

Wait! Could this be a hoax? Ten years later enter Gavin (Seth Adam Kallick). He's a film-maker who just so happens to have found all of Sophia's footage. Sophia? Missing...or never existed. Gavin is a fourth-rate P.T. Barnum and smells a good film. With huge credibility problems, debt, and a history of deception, Gavin puts together all of Sophia's videotapes. Now he must market the collection. Big problem, no one believes Gavin or the legend. Experts are called in...experts in the paranormal, myth, and video...they all say Gavin's project is a hoax. As we continue to see the horrific demise of Sophia and Feldman (which may be faked), Gavin is met with increasing hostility by the public, his family, and a film crew filming his plight. Just when we are sure Sophia's 2005 effort and Gavin's 2015 effort are a hoax...again, no spoilers here, but before this film ends, you will have seen a horror movie.

Have two Maryland film-makers engaged in an elaborate hoax? Is there anything to the legend of Peeping Tom and the haunted tunnel? Just because someone is part con-man, part promoter, does that necessitate that he is a fraud? Erik Kristopher Myers has done a fine job in making "Butterfly Kisses," which will leave you with a very uneasy feeling and also get you to jump out of your recliner a time or two.