THE KAOS BRIEF is a new first-person narrative, (AKA found footage movie) in which a secret society known as KAOS broadcasts hacked footage revealing mysterious events surrounding the abduction of four teenagers. The film will enjoy its World Premiere at Boston SCI-FI Film Festival Saturday night,  February 18, 2017!

It all starts innocently enough. Skylar (Drew Lipson), a charismatic teen begins shooting a his 1,000th VLOG of SkylarTV by announcing he is going on a camping trip with his boyfriend Corey (Marco DelVecchio), Skylar’s twin sister Dakota (Charlie Morgan Patton) and her boyfriend Tren (Akanimo Eyo).  The crew of teens pack up and head out. They set up camp, and Skylar breaks out his techie toys including a drone camera. Later that night they see mysterious lights in the sky and SkylarTV gets footage of it. “Your VLOG just got a lot more interesting”, says his sister. No kidding. Stranger things continue to happen. The group wakes up to stacked pillars of rocks in their campsite, and a patterned of burn marks, in a nearby field.

You would think that the film would stay in the familiar territory of the Blair Witch Project, hand held cameras in inherently creepy woods, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. But writer, director JP Mandarino pulls the train off the tracks and sends the kids back home. Skylar begins uploading his VLOG entries to YouTube and soon thereafter the home surveillance cameras begin picking up strange black cars in front of the house and trash cans methodically stacked on top of one another. There appear to be ‘fans’ of his Skylar’s explosive U.F.O. uploads that would rather not have them out.

Thus begins a briskly paced, entertaining, multi-layered horror mystery. Who are the men in black? What is it that the kids saw in the woods? Who is the mysterious person chatting with Skylar that seems to know what is happening? What is it that got implanted in Tren’s back? Clever scares and restrained gore are something that this movie brandishes effortlessly to great effect.

Another remarkable element is the chemistry between the four leads. While pushing credulity (the lead is supposed to be 17 years old) the cast is drop dead gorgeous and has a chemistry that is fully believable. Furthermore it is refreshing to see a film casually feature a cast and storyline that sees no colors or boundaries in orientation. That’s not the point and nor should it be. But it is a breath of fresh air to see things like that casually represented.

The trick in a found footage flick is to get the audience to buy the conceit that the cameras were intentionally kept rolling for a reason. Then, after that, you have to offer a story that gets them to forget the conceit. Mandarino takes great care to avoid the common cliches of the overdone found footage genre. He inventively keeps technology around in an way that doesn’t feel forced allowing a plausible reason for the footage to have been recorded while keeping it from getting in the way. Skylar has a vlog, yes, which is typical, but there are drone cameras, chat windows, home surveillance cameras, and FaceTime all offering different points of view that feel natural.

The KAOS Brief is an refreshingly original entry into the found footage horror genre. Taking what worked in other films like Blair Witch, Paranormal Activity, even Cloverfield, and crafting a movie that has plenty of shocks and jolts, Mandarino delivers a clean, modestly produced, mystery thriller.