MALIBU HORROR STORY - Mark Reviews Movies

Malibu Horror Story, Iconic Events

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 19, 2023

A mild mishmash of form and structure doesn't cover up the simple fact that Malibu Horror Story is a shallow and mostly formulaic scare machine. It's one of those movies that's about as frightening as the level of volume on the speakers. Pretty much every single scare attempt here comes from someone—or something—shrieking at the camera or a very loud musical sting when a quieter someone—or, again, something—pops into frame. Some of them work, of course, simply because of unexpected timing or genuine surprise, but once the movie's pattern establishes itself, there's little of the unexpected or the surprising to be found in this material.

The central conceit is, at least, somewhat clever. Basically, writer/director Scott Slone gives us three different types of filmmaking styles in one movie. The first revolves around a team of independent filmmakers—or online video creators, which is probably more likely in this day and age—looking into the case of four missing teenage boys. Ten years prior, the teens went off the hills and mountains outside their native Malibu, never to be seen again, so this new quartet of amateur paranormal investigators have traveled to the same location to search for clues and, hopefully for them, evidence of something supernatural having to do with the disappearance.

This present-tense section plays like a traditional, objective-perspective narrative. We meet Josh (Dylan Sprayberry), the de facto leader of the team, and Matt (Robert Bailey Jr.), the crew's tech expert, and Ashley (Valentina de Angelis), the team's main researcher, and Jessica (Rebecca Forsythe), the editor. All of them have set up camp in a cave somewhere in that mountainous region for the penultimate day of shooting new footage.

They have some neat, if questionable, equipment to capture any kind of paranormal activity if it should happen, including a thermal camera, a series of motion-activated still cameras, a meter that detects changes in the electromagnetic field of the air or something, and a "spirit box," which supposedly channels the sounds of ghosts. A short prologue lets us see them use the equipment, but their key role in the tale comes later.

The second style is a faux documentary—the one the team is finishing, although Jessica made a rough cut already. It digs into the mystery of the missing teens, using some authentic-looking new broadcasts and interviews with people who covered the story when it first broke. Meanwhile, the four filmmakers appear occasionally to add some additional background information, such as the fact that the family of one of the teens apparently has been cursed by the Native American peoples who lived on land the family purchased after the government forced relocation of the indigenous tribes.

If not for the fact that the opening scenes make it clear that we're watching a work of fiction, Slone might have tricked us by giving the fake documentary a pretty convincing air to it. Because there's no illusion that any of this is real or meant to be taken as such, though, one wonders what the point of devoting so much time to and investment in the gimmick actually is.

The final format is blended into the movie and the faux movie within the movie. It's the raw footage of those now long-missing teenagers, as they party before their big trip, wander the remote area without anyone knowing where they are, and find themselves either stoned enough to think they're seeing ghosts or actually seeing ancient spirits.

Each stylized section of the narrative is routine in what it tries to and does do, and it's a bit amusing when one of the documentary's co-hosts makes sure we saw the obvious mass of a supposed spirit in one of the lengthy sections of the teens freaking out in the wild. One also wonders how an eerie musical score ended up in the teens' raw footage, even without any editing on Jessica's part, and clichés and familiar conceits such as that undermine any sense of cohesion to the illusion that any of this might be the real deal.

Slone deserves some credit, not only for the clever three-section concept, but also for allowing the time—too much, perhaps—for some mystery and suspense to build over the course of each segment and in general. The movie saves its horror show until the third act, and there's some promise to it when the screenplay finds a way to connect the open-ended mystery of the fake documentary, what happened to the teens after their recording session seems at an end, and what's in store for the crew of paranormal investigators in the cave.

That all of it essentially comes down to two different groups of characters, filmed in two distinct styles, running from, screaming at, and hiding from a series of monsters—who have a preternatural sense of where to be for a perfectly framed close-up, by the way—is disappointing. It's also to be expected, though, because, for whatever formal dynamism Malibu Horror Story attempts, the movie is little more than a haunted house kind of ride.

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