Invoking Scream (Frightfest 2026)

Invoking Scream does something immediately helpful: it explains the plot of Invoking Yell in its opening minutes, and as someone who hasn’t seen the first film, I appreciated the clarity. The original was shot to look like it was made in 1997, full of found‑footage visual degradation, grimy textures, and deliberate ugliness. It looked like absolute hell, but that was the point, both of Patricio Valladares’ film and of found footage at large: the form can be punk rock in a way others can’t. This sequel, set in 2005, according to the camera time codes, is far slicker, jumping between past and present, between the planning of a documentary and material ostensibly from the original film.

Invoking Yell centred on the formation of a black metal band and leaned into the nihilism and violence that defined the scene in the 1990s to truly satanic and bedevilling ends. Things have mellowed since then, but Invoking Scream still carries that ghoulish flame and interpretation of black metal, which seeps into the quieter moments. The metal chatter is fun and, more importantly, genuine – “like recognises like,” and you can tell when a filmmaker is faking it and Valladares isn’t.

The structure is loose. The trio at the centre of the film — Luna Martínez (Paulina), Romina Dagnino (Carla) and Matías López (Nico) — record everything, wandering through the woods and capturing character moments before shifting into documentary mode. These sections are interspersed with nightmare visuals seemingly pulled from Invoking Yell, creating a collage of amateur documentary footage and corrupted horror imagery. The music and sound design are exemplary, giving the film a sonic identity far stronger than its narrative one. Valladares also uses tape distortion as a recurring source of horror — familiar, but effective. As the trio move deeper into the woods where the first film took place, it becomes clear the footage isn’t cross‑cutting between timelines; it’s being interfered with. The victims, sacrifices, or “ascended” figures from the first film are affecting the footage of this attempted documentary.

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The project often feels like an extended V/H/S segment, particularly the spirit of Maggie Levin’s Shredding from V/H/S 99. And like many films from that franchise, it never fully justifies why the characters are filming everything, yes, they’re making a documentary, but they don’t shoot with purpose; they simply shoot which is contrary to how documentarians actually work. Their attempted documentary is amateurish and benign, and in‑canon I don’t envy their editing process especially when the cameraman films everything, including his own pervy behaviour. Still, the supernatural corruption gives their mountain of footage an inherent creepiness. While far from original in 2026, found footage built this way continues to have a deeply ingrained sense of disquiet and unease. Filmmakers are constantly trying to innovate the form, but Invoking Scream shows that the classic found footage flavours are still plenty tasty.

A character from later in the film throws shade on their project, saying “not every story needs telling,” a throwaway line that feels like the film winking at its own weak metatextual justification. Their documentary may be unnecessary, but that’s an in‑baked device within so much found footage, at least the trio aren’t insufferable which is more than can be said for many films shot in this mode. Similarly, the documentary conceit gradually falls away, more troublesome is the fact that the horror only minimally affects the characters for the large majority of the runtime. Most of the horror set pieces occur in the edit, with footage being corrupted, invaded, or overwritten. It’s stylistically evocative and well assembled, but as a horror narrative it suffers from the same issue as films that confine their most aggressive happenings to “it was all a dream”: if nothing materially happens to the characters, how high can the stakes really be? While true for most of the run time, this isn’t true for it all.

For most of its runtime, the film is more interested in mood and texture than escalation. Yet, the third act delivers the creepiest and most graphic visuals, fulfilling the earlier suggestiveness and the pre‑film warning, but the escalation is odd: as a sequence of events the two sisters are essentially jumped out of nowhere by a demonic presence. As a classical sequence, it’s abrupt and strangely paced, however as a stylistic exercise, it’s menacing, perverse, and makes the most of a meagre budget. The Chilean Invoking Scream is a strange project, and I cannot pinpoint my feelings about it. Valladares’s film is a strange hybrid: part amateurish documentary, part corrupted nightmare, part black‑metal folklore and part historical document. It’s wholly uneven, but its sound design, tape distortion, and ghoulish aesthetic give it heaps of rewarding personality. It’s not a clean found‑footage narrative, but it has moments where its atmosphere and intent align — and in punk rock world of found footage, sometimes that’s all we need.

Rob’s Archive – Invoking Scream