I have to admit, I nearly turned writer/director Tomas Sem Løkke-Sørensen’s film The Psychics off after the first couple of minutes. The Norwegian found footage film begins with its camera bouncing all over the place, one of the things I most hate about these kinds of films. Thankfully it got rid of the shaky cam and got down to business.
Camilla (Kirsti Lovas) is a journalist doing a story on psychics and their claims. As she does, things out of her past start to emerge. She decides to move the project in this direction, using her own experiences to gauge the psychics’ abilities. And maybe it will solve the disappearance of her younger sister.
Both of the psychics Frank (Frank Thomas Holen Andersen) and Astrid (Oddrun Valestrand) warn her against it. Of course, this doesn’t stop her. Soon her investigation has stirred up dangerous forces both human and supernatural.
Shot on an almost nonexistent budget, The Psychics had a crew of three and entirely improvised dialogue. The director also plays Tomas who is heard but never seen. These kinds of circumstances could, and have, derailed a production. Thankfully it seems to have had the opposite effect and brought out the best in the cast and crew.
The Psychics look quite good apart from a bit to much shaky cam. It also avoids the usual bane of no-budget films, sound problems. That’s actually even more impressive as the location where they shot the farm scenes was near an airport.
The plot is a bit different from the one location type found footage film that seems to make up most of the sub-genre. The Psychics has several locations and plays out more like a mystery than a horror film. It’s only near the end as things reach their climax that we realize that the title characters’ abilities aren’t the only supernatural forces involved.
The Psychics has just wrapped up a successful festival run that included the Horror-On-Sea Festival and is available to stream and on DVD via MY Spotlight Independent. You can check the film’s website and Facebook page for more details.