Sometimes you stumble across a movie so ahead of its time that you want to stand up and applaud. Other times, you stumble across a movie that makes you wish time itself would hurry up and end the suffering. The Collingswood Story is both. Touted as the “first screenlife horror film,” it’s the great-great-grandparent of Unfriended, Host, and every other Zoom call horror flick you’ve endured since 2020. Unfortunately, like many great-great-grandparents, it’s creaky, hard to follow, and smells vaguely of mothballs.
Yes, this is the granddaddy of them all, the cinematic Rosetta Stone for people staring at webcams while spooky stuff happens off-screen. And boy, does it make you miss the good old days when horror movies involved, you know, things actually happening.
The Premise: Skype Meets Scooby-Doo
The setup is simple: Rebecca (Stephanie Dees) has just moved into a house in Collingswood, New Jersey to start college. Her boyfriend Johnny (Johnny Burton) buys her a webcam for her birthday—because nothing says romance like making sure your partner can see your acne in real time.
They start chatting, and then, because people in horror movies can’t leave well enough alone, they rope in a psychic named Vera. Vera looks like she got kicked out of a Stevie Nicks cover band, complete with candles, sunglasses, and the air of someone who charges $20 for a séance and $50 for a fake crystal. Naturally, Vera starts spouting spooky nonsense about Collingswood being the home of some 19th-century cult leader who mutilated girls for funsies.
From there, Rebecca investigates, Johnny panics, Vera gets weirder, and we all die a slow death watching pixelated faces on early-2000s webcams.
The Horror of Technology (and Acting)
You’ve never truly known fear until you’ve watched two amateur actors try to carry a movie by talking to a beige plastic Logitech webcam for 90 minutes. Forget ghosts—buffering is the real villain here.
Every conversation feels like watching a bad long-distance relationship implode in real time. Rebecca and Johnny fight, reconcile, and whine, all while you scream at the screen: Please, for the love of God, just log off AIM and go outside. The dialogue is flatter than a Nokia ringtone, and the pacing makes C-SPAN coverage of a zoning board meeting look like Mad Max: Fury Road.
The scariest part? Realizing this was filmed in 2000, when video chat quality was roughly equivalent to watching Bigfoot footage through a dirty aquarium.
The Psychic Hotline from Hell
Then there’s Vera, the psychic. Oh, Vera. If Miss Cleo and a Hot Topic employee had a baby, you’d get this woman. She sits in a dark room, wearing sunglasses indoors, whispering vague nonsense that makes fortune cookies look like Dostoevsky.
At one point, she reveals she’s missing an eye—because apparently every cult survivor in movies has to look like they lost a game of “Truth or Dismemberment.” She’s supposed to be the movie’s creepy anchor, but she comes off more like your eccentric aunt who gets wine-drunk and insists Mercury is in retrograde.
Collingswood, New Jersey: Not Worth the Trip
The movie tries to sell Collingswood as this haunted hotspot of supernatural evil, but all we see are blurry shots of Rebecca driving around suburbia like she’s lost on the way to Trader Joe’s. It’s supposed to be ominous, but it feels more like a rejected House Hunters spinoff: Paranormal Properties.
The big reveal is that the house she’s living in has a dark past. Which, sure, but so does every other house in New Jersey. Frankly, the most horrifying thing about Collingswood is probably the rent.
The Cult of Alan Tashi (Worst Villain Ever)
Alan Tashi, the cult leader, is the boogeyman here—a French immigrant who murdered girls in the 1800s and then disappeared, leaving behind…a wooden shaker toy. That’s right, folks. Not a cursed dagger, not an ancient grimoire—just a rickety rattle that looks like something you’d buy at an Amish flea market.
When Tashi finally shows up, it’s like the movie forgot it needed an actual villain and just threw a guy in a cloak on screen. He has all the menace of a mall Santa with a hangover. Imagine waiting 80 minutes for the big bad to arrive, and when he does, you wonder if you should offer him a throat lozenge.
Found Footage Before Found Footage Was Cool
To give credit where it’s due, The Collingswood Story was innovative. It really was the first to say, “Hey, what if the entire horror film was just people staring into their webcams?” And for that, it deserves a spot in the horror hall of fame—maybe right next to the section labeled “Good Ideas, Terrible Execution.”
Because yes, it paved the way for better films. But being first doesn’t always mean being best. The Wright Brothers invented the airplane, but you wouldn’t want to fly to Vegas on their prototype.
Jump Scares? More Like Sit There Scares
What The Collingswood Story lacks, besides budget and charisma, is anything resembling actual scares. Instead, we get endless scenes of Rebecca peering at postcards, Johnny scrolling through early-2000s websites, and Vera talking like she’s auditioning for Goosebumps.
By the time the climax arrives—with Rebecca in the attic, Vera warning her, and Johnny screaming—you’re less frightened and more relieved it’s almost over. The ending, with Johnny dead and Rebecca possessed, should hit like a hammer. Instead, it lands like a deflated balloon.
The Real Nightmare: Watching This Sober
Here’s the real problem: The Collingswood Story is boring. It’s not so bad it’s good—it’s so bad it’s nap time. It’s a movie that requires either a gallon of coffee or several shots of tequila to get through. It’s admirable for being the first of its kind, but let’s be honest: if this movie were released today, it would go viral on YouTube for all the wrong reasons.
Watching it now feels like being haunted by your old Myspace page: cringey, outdated, and something you’d prefer never to revisit.
Verdict: Unfriended Before Unfriended
To its credit, The Collingswood Story walked so Unfriended and Host could run. It proved the concept of screenlife horror had legs. But as a standalone film? It’s less “terrifying supernatural experience” and more “awkward Zoom meeting that never ends.”
If you’re a horror historian, watch it for the novelty. If you’re a normal human being, skip it and rewatch Paranormal Activity. At least then you’ll get a jump scare or two for your trouble.
