Panic Fest 2024 Worlds Review- Unnerving Found Footage That Leaves You Wanting More

Worlds, Directed by Chris Hammarberg and showing at Panic Fest 2024, wants to make you uncomfortable. This found-footage indie film is everything good about found footage. It is creepy, strange, grungy, and low-fi in all the best ways. For those who love a deep dive into strangeness, you will be pleasantly surprised. Although there is nothing pointedly terrifying about this film, you’re left feeling rattled. Maybe you shouldn’t have watched this.

As with many found-footage films, it begins with a simple interview that sets the tone. Something very weird has happened, and now the filmmaking team thinks they can capitalize on the true crime doc trend and become citizen detectives. The fact that the person they are interviewing is convincingly terrified doesn’t deter them at all. Morgan Williams, a shivering, nervous, brittle revelation sells the conceit. She and her friends saw a strange man around their town before he showed up at her house one night and then was found decapitated in the middle of the road. Nikki Neurohr’s(Morgan) performance is so good it hooks you from the opening words. She is scared, and as a result, so are we, even though we have no idea what we are scared of or even what is going on.

This offputting man(Nick Dailey), nicknamed Worlds because of the white T-shirt with the word emblazoned on it that he always wears, carries a backpack and seemingly shambles aimlessly through their completely normal-looking town. Periodically, he spreads his arms out and seems to gyrate or convulse before he simply begins walking again. It’s unsettling. Morgan and her friends became so fascinated by him that they began filming him and sending the videos to each other. When he showed up at Morgan’s house, she called the police, and the group promptly stopped filming him altogether. When his headless body was found, Hammarberg and his team got involved.

Their motivation is simple. They want to solve his murder and make some money. The remainder of the film is a mix of interviews between Morgan, the police officer who answered Morgan’s call when Worlds appeared at her house, an investigative journalist, and the man who first found World’s dead body. This group of people develop a bizarre narrative that is as mesmerizing as Worlds’ unnatural movements. I was on the edge of my seat when emotions escalated, and interviewees went missing. There was something so unbelievable yet entirely plausible in all of their stories that it sticks with you. Hammarberg managed to assemble a stellar cast that reads as completely natural.

The more we know about Worlds, the less we understand. Footage of him is eerie and unnerving but not overtly violent or scary. Perhaps the most frightening part of Worlds was a tense sequence of spliced-together body cam and home surveillance footage that genuinely feels real. By the time the team interviews Jonathan Fischer(John R. Smith Jr.), the man who found his body, the murder investigation becomes a country and potential worldwide conspiracy. When the police officer who investigated Morgan’s home and initially talked with Hammarberg becomes aggressively belligerent, they know they have stumbled into something they can’t imagine.

As things get stranger, Worlds effortlessly shifts focus. It’s a seamless transition that barely resonates because you are in so deep. This film feels like something your friend sent you and is freaked out by. In the end, Worlds wants you to sit with that feeling. It deliberately offers no answers. That decision allows it to ask more significant questions about what is really important. Is the mystery or content creation more important than the people involved? Should art supersede humanity? There are no easy answers here, and that is part of Worlds’ magic.

Find all our Panic Fest 2024 coverage here.