It
is like the camera in the Twilight Zone episode
“A Most Unusual Camera,” but it has an even more sinister backstory. Once owned
by a serial killer, it develops pictures that foretell grisly deaths, including
that of a PTSD-suffering war photographer’s wife. Suddenly, Jack Zeller must
scramble to arrange for substitute victims. Of course, that sort of makes him a
serial killer too in Aaron B. Koontz’s Camera
Obscura (trailer
here),
which opens this Friday in New York.
Zeller’s
last assignment really messed him up. To get him back on the horse, his wife
Claire gives him a vintage German camera and arranges a gig taking photos of
her company’s latest real estate development. Somehow, he manages to find a
photo developer still in business (you’d think a pro like him would have his
own darkroom facilities, but whatever). However, his pictures turn out a little
funny. For some reason, the color film prints in black-and-white. Several shots
also depict gruesome death scenes he surely would have noticed at the time.
Of
course, each sinister photo soon comes to pass. The first are merely accidental
deaths, but they become increasingly gory. They also start to feature Claire as
the dead body, but Zeller discovers he can replace his wife in the photos by
killing another victim in the same place and manner. He tries to pick
replacements who have it coming, but his substitute killings really get complicated
when the cops start to suspect.
Even
though there are several forerunners to Koontz and Cameron Burns’ tale of evil
photo prescience, including a Goosebumps YA
chapter book, Obscura is still a
rather stylish exercise in the macabre. In fact, it works rather well,
precisely because it abides by its own internal rules. (Those time-stamps are a
hard and fast deadline Zeller must observe.)
Christopher
Denham’s moody brooding is almost too much of a good thing. It is hard to imagine
living with Zeller after a while, but during the first act, he and Nadja
Bobyleva’s Claire make an appealingly down-to-earth everyday-people-looking
couple. Genre regular Noah Segan (The Mind’s Eye, Redeemer) also brings a lot of attitude and energy as Zeller’s
best friend, Walt. Plus, Catherine Curtin and Chase Williamson (SiREN, Beyond the Gates) provide a
credible foil and the voice of reason, as the “bad cop” and “good cop” dogging
Zeller.
