MAN FINDS TAPE movie review | ©2025 Magnet Releasing

Rating: Not Rated
Stars: Kelsey Pribilski, William Magnusson, John Gholson, Brian Villalobos, Nell Kessler
Writers: Peter Hall & Paul Gandersman
Directors: Peter Hall & Paul Gandersman
Distributor: Magnet Releasing
Release Date: December 5, 2025

MAN FINDS TAPE is a tale of literally knockout found footage – as in, the tapes sometimes render viewers suddenly unconscious.

Written and directed by Peter Hall & Paul Gandersman, MAN FINDS TAPE is a fairly lively mix of horror subgenres: the one indicated in the title, a seemingly cozy small town with dark secrets, and another that adds a welcome spark of amusing insanity to the proceedings.

MAN FINDS TAPE opens with televangelist Reverend Endicott Carr (John Gholson) asking his audience to place a hand on the TV screen and pray along with him. We will soon learn that Reverend Carr also ministers to the congregation in Larkin, Texas.

Then we’re shown the famous footage from October, 1967, which ever since has purported to be proof of Bigfoot. A voiceover asks reasonably why, if this is real, there isn’t more footage of the cryptid. Is it faked? Or do the monsters of the twenty-first century “hide in plain sight”?

Our narrator tells us that her family – her parents, brother, and herself – were in the center of what was happening, but people refused to see the monster in their midst.

We then meet our narrator Lynn (Kelsey Pribilski) in person, as she reluctantly returns to her hometown of Larkin to check in on her brother Lucas (William Magnusson).

Some years ago, Lucas received a mini-DV tape of himself as a child in his bedroom, with an adult coming into the frame. Lucas parlayed this into a successful Web series, “Man Finds Tape.” He has since embellished or outright falsified sequences, getting himself into legal trouble and earning Lynn’s ire.

But it doesn’t seem like Lucas manufactured footage of a downtown intersection where all the pedestrians froze, including one poor fellow crossing in the middle of the block, where he was run over by a truck. Weirder still, while everybody in Larkin knows about the accident, even those present don’t remember seeing it.

We get a satisfying explanation of the who and the why, as well as how of that first tape came into Lucas’s possession (no, it’s not that there’s a villain who’s a complete idiot).

MAN FINDS TAPE has more complex plots, both in terms of its narrative and in terms of character schemes than is customary with found footage horror. It jumps around in time, so that we assemble its information rather like a jigsaw puzzle, which provides some mystery fun. We blessedly are never put in the position of asking why someone is toting a camera around in the midst of mayhem.

The main cast, which also includes Nell Kessler as Lucas’s concerned but baffled ex and Brian Villalobos, is all strong. Gholson injects parochial evangelical smarminess into the Reverend, and everyone else goes through the stages of exasperation, confusion, fury and terror with naturalism.

MAN FINDS TAPE has pleasing texture that leads to a splattery, appropriately gonzo climax.

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