Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		1.5

Phoenix Forgotten Blu-ray Movie Review

Fuhgeddaboutit.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 1, 2017

Fox may be hoping we curmudgeonly reviewer types would forget most of us feel “found footage” offerings have definitely become more than passé, at least as evidenced by the deluxe, swag filled package they sent me in support of Phoenix Forgotten, in what some might see as an attempt to distract from the actual film at hand. I’m as open as the next person to being bribed (that’s a joke — kind of), but in the case of Phoenix Forgotten, probably no amount of prizes, consolation or otherwise, could overcome this film’s inherently derivative qualities. Those qualities of course harken back to the granddaddy of all relatively recent found footage entries, The Blair Witch Project (down to somewhat similar marketing art), but probably are actually more in line with Blair Witch, in that Phoenix Forgotten posits a sibling in search of a missing relative, much as that putative reboot from Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett did. Phoenix Forgotten is loosely assembled around a real life incident, a March 1997 sighting of mysterious lights over the skies of Phoenix which was witnessed by so many thousands of people that traditional “write off” explanations that typically accrue around such events seemed a little disingenuous. That’s certainly a great place to start with a film, but like so many found footage offerings, Phoenix Forgotten struggles under the weight of its own pretensions, and, much as I mentioned in my now long ago The Blair Witch Project Blu-ray review, some who share a certain curmudgeonly response to overly contrived films may find this resolutely lacking in any real scares.

While the foundational plot conceit tying Phoenix Forgotten to the actual “Phoenix Lights” phenomenon of March 13, 1997 would seem to give the film at least a shot at something relatively different in terms of found footage offerings, the sad fact is the film is so relentlessly predictable that a plot summary is probably unnecessary. Sophie (Florence Hartigan) is returning home to Phoenix with a documentary cameraman in tow with the idea that she can help her now fragmented family find closure some twenty years after her older brother Josh (Luke Spencer Roberts) disappeared (along with two other Phoenix youths) in the wake of the supposed UFO sightings.

Already the film is on unsteady footing from both a structural and a narrative standpoint. Structurally, co-writer and director Justin Barber starts offering home videos (one assumes part of the whole “found footage” gambit) without offering context or even tying them to Sophie’s return. Narratively, the film starts out wallowing in the family dysfunction which Josh’s disappearance has engendered, something that’s probably meant to establish an emotional tether with the audience but which instead simply comes off as needlessly melodramatic and inauthentic feeling.

Sophie and Josh’s distraught mother has kept a shoebox full of Josh’s old videotapes in his closet, which one would think would give the film its impetus to go the “full found footage” route, but instead interstitial home movies (not necessarily anything from the shoebox) are inserted, documenting Sophie’s long ago sixth birthday party, which (big surprise) happened to be the night the so-called Phoenix Lights appeared. In a perhaps cheeky reference to The X-Files, Josh considers himself a mini- Mulder and, along with two of his friends, decides to investigate “what’s out there”.

With probably too much ineffective time documenting the sad lives of Sophie’s parents, the film struggles to actually gain suspenseful momentum, and a quasi Deus ex Machina device surrounding a miraculously found tape that supposedly provides all the answers is going to be too pat a conceit for some viewers to handle. With a handful of clues and what seems to be an almost genetic predisposition to get to the bottom of a mystery, Sophie feels this lost tape will be her veritable “Moishe the Explainer”, but once again, the film makes some odd narrative decision, including pretty much exiling Sophie herself from the duration of the movie, as the found footage element takes over. Where’s that emotional tether now, some may be asking.

That “new, improved” found footage owes more than a tip o’ the hat (and/or mucous filled nose) to The Blair Witch Project, with endless (and meaningless) conversations, an inability to figure out locations, and general panic in the dead of night, but the film admittedly does finally work up at least a bit of suspense in its final moments. By that point, however, some impatient viewers will probably have been wishing some aliens would abduct them, if only so they didn’t have to sit through any more of Phoenix Forgotten.

Phoenix Forgotten Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Phoenix Forgotten is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1 (the archival footage resides around Academy ratio). As with many found footage offerings, there's a heterogeneity on display that tends to make traditional analysis of the imagery a little problematic. The film's closing credits feature a "captured with RED" logo, but it's not clear whether the lo-fi looking "older" material was in fact captured at high resolution and then intentionally distressed to look shoddy, or if in fact lower resolution cameras were utilized. One way or the other, and completely expectedly, the contemporary footage looks nicely sharp and well detailed, with a natural looking palette and excellent fine detail levels. The "archival" footage is widely variant, almost always pretty fuzzy looking (something exacerbated by lots of "shaky cam" footage), and also frequently having less than stable contrast. Some of the archival footage either has inherent noise or has been tweaked to appear so.

Phoenix Forgotten Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There are moments of really good low end and surround activity on Phoenix Forgotten's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track, but they tend to be intermittent and perhaps too sporadic for some audiophiles. A lot of the film (especially the early going) is more "talking head" material than anything else, and as such immersion is limited, though fidelity is always fine. Interestingly, the "archival audio" doesn't seem to have been tweaked as much as the video element, and so there's a somewhat more homogeneous feel to the sonics than the video presentation offers.

Phoenix Forgotten Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Sophie's Story (1080p; 3:12) is an ostensible "news report".


• Phoenix Found (1080p; 7:16) is an EPK focusing on the real life event that sparked the film.


• Audio Commentary with Justin Barber, Florence Hartigan, Chelsea Lopez and Justin Mathews


• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2:02)

Phoenix Forgotten Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

There was a really stupid joke going around when I was a kid, where the joke teller would pretend to be a television pitchman hawking a new cereal called "Lost" (this was years before the series of the same name), which ended with the familiar phrase, "So, kids, the next time you're with your Mom at the store, tell her to get 'Lost'". Some may be wanting to attach that general sentiment to "found footage" films, since it seems way past time to tell them all to get lost. Phoenix Forgotten has about ten to fifteen minutes of relatively suspenseful material. What you do for the other hour-plus is up to you. Technical merits are generally strong (with an understanding of the "found footage" aspect) for those considering a purchase.