‘Mind Body Spirit’ Chattanooga Film Festival 2023 Review

It’s easy to quickly label new found footage horror Mind Body Spirit as just another genre film about influencers. But to dismiss it as another vapid film about the internet is to miss a fascinating look at isolation and millennial ennui told through YouTube algorithms and awkward yoga practice. While it isn’t necessarily breaking new ground in the found footage space, Mind Body Spirit cleverly plays with the subgenre’s established conventions to create something spooky, smart, and wholly entertaining.

Told through videos posted to her YouTube channel Mind Body Spirit, aspiring yoga influencer Anya (Sarah J. Bartholomew) has quit her job and moved into her recently deceased grandmother’s home. As a millennial in her mid to late 20s, Anya is trying to find her purpose in life, and looks to her deceased grandmother for an answer. That answer, at first, comes through her yoga videos, a well-meaning appropriation of ancient practices as a means for her own self-discovery. Don’t worry, that comes into play later.

But, this all changes when one day, something falls off a shelf, alerting Anya of a hidden door. She records her experience as she discovers a hidden room with an obviously cursed diary. But instead of regarding the book as a second edition of the Necronomicon filled with seemingly Slavic texts, Anya delves in with reckless abandon, convinced she’s found her purpose. Quickly, yoga is replaced with the rituals discovered in the journal’s pages.

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From there, the story continues to unfold through Anya’s YouTube channel, where she still posts yoga videos, as well as vlogs about the ritual she discovers in the aforementioned cursed diary. And as is common in found footage, this doesn’t go well for poor Anya. It’s predictable in its narrative arc, but along the way, directors Alex Henes and Matthew Merenda are able to build an interesting and deeply relatable story about a young woman willing to do anything to find her place in the world.

In fact, Mind Body Spirit is just as much a horrific family tragedy as it is a supernatural affair. Yes, you want to scream at Anya for reading from the book, but at the same time, you can understand her desperation for belonging. On top of that, Anya, like many millennials, is unknowingly sucked into a cycle of intergenerational trauma and is subsequently taken advantage of by her own grandmother.

Bartholomew does an admirable job as Anya, especially as she’s faced with the Herculean task of carrying virtually the entire film on her shoulders. She shines particularly in the first half of the film as slightly unhinged but well-meaning, embodying the anxious energy of a millennial grasping for their last semblance of sanity. And while she still delivers an unnerving performance as her circumstances get more supernaturally dire, her best moments are more grounded in reality.

Henes and Merenda aren’t afraid to break some found footage rules in constructing Mind Body Spirit. Found footage purists are sure to find details to pick at, including the use of non-diegetic music. But past the minute details, the co-directors creatively craft scares using techniques like the tried-and-true slow panning camera. And their best technical work comes from the ads they insert strategically throughout the film. The ads shock you out of the narrative and remind you that technically you’re a series of short videos. They break the tension by purposefully taking you out of Anya’s story, which is a fascinating and pretty genius way to break tension while also keeping you in the digital realm. With how sleek the faux ads look, they almost fool you into thinking you’re actually watching something on YouTube.

With its investigation of intergenerational trauma through an unmoored millennial, Mind Body Spirit is a found footage version of Hereditary. It may not pack the same punch as Aster’s modern masterpiece, but it’s still operating in those terrifying realms where those we love the most only wish us harm. On the surface, it may seem like another influencer horror, but really, Mind Body Spirit is an effective contemporary piece of found footage that subtly captures the horrors of being a millennial.

Tags: Chattanooga Film Festival 2023 found footage Mind Body Spirit

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