The Madness of Method
There’s a fine line between “method acting” and “please call the police,” and Adrian Țofei’s Be My Cat: A Film for Annesprints across it in a catsuit, hissing all the way. Marketed as Romania’s first found-footage horror movie and hailed by some critics as “revolutionary,” this 2015 descent into narcissistic chaos is less “meta-cinema” and more “an audition tape accidentally uploaded to Hell.”
It’s a one-man show written, directed, produced, and starred in by Țofei himself—a man so committed to the art of self-destruction that you start to wonder if the real horror is watching a filmmaker implode on camera in real time. The premise is simple and absurd: a Romanian aspiring filmmaker becomes obsessed with Anne Hathaway and makes a movie to convince her to work with him. By the end, the only thing that’s convinced is the audience that Romania needs stricter background checks on cameras.
The Found Footage That Shouldn’t Have Been Found
Let’s start with the basics. The found-footage genre works best when you believe what you’re seeing—when it feels accidental, chaotic, and disturbingly real. Be My Cat is disturbingly real, yes, but not because it’s immersive—it’s because it feels like something you shouldn’t be watching. Like a stranger’s breakdown livestreamed for your discomfort.
The camera jitters, the lighting flickers, and the sound is whatever the microphone feels like that day. There’s no score, no polish, and certainly no relief. The film’s low-budget aesthetic is meant to sell authenticity but instead makes the whole affair resemble a hostage video directed by a man who thinks The Blair Witch Project needed more monologues about Anne Hathaway.
At least in Paranormal Activity, the ghosts had the decency to clean up after themselves. Here, the only haunting presence is Țofei’s ego.
Adrian Țofei: The Auteur Who Loved Too Much
To be fair, Adrian Țofei gives the performance of a lifetime—if that lifetime were spent in a padded room. His portrayal of a delusional filmmaker named Adrian (subtle!) is so intense that it often feels autobiographical. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe he wants us to question where the performance ends and the madness begins. Unfortunately, the answer seems to be: it doesn’t.
Adrian stammers, pleads, lectures, and laughs to himself while talking to the camera, explaining his genius plan to lure Anne Hathaway to Romania by showing her his “acting abilities.” The plan, in short, is to make a snuff film so convincing that Anne will be impressed enough to join him. Somewhere in Los Angeles, Anne Hathaway’s legal team just felt a chill.
At times, Țofei’s sincerity is unnerving. He’s not playing a psychopath so much as embodying one, which might explain why his co-stars often look genuinely terrified. One suspects the “method acting” on set involved an uncomfortable number of emergency exits.
The Victims: Actors, Audience, and Common Sense
The plot—if you can call it that—unfolds like a slow-motion car crash in a basement. Adrian recruits three local actresses to star in his demo scenes, which he plans to send to Anne. They arrive one by one, armed with optimism, bad instincts, and an alarming willingness to trust a man filming them in an abandoned house.
Sonia, the first victim, quickly realizes something is wrong when Adrian “accidentally” chloroforms her. It’s a shocking moment—not because it’s scary, but because you realize there’s still another hour of this. Poor Sonia doesn’t make it, and poor you still have to watch two more doomed actresses wander into the frame.
Flory, the second actress, becomes the subject of one of the film’s most grotesque and misguided scenes, involving body mutilation and fat-shaming disguised as “art.” It’s the cinematic equivalent of watching someone perform liposuction with a butter knife while monologuing about The Dark Knight Rises.
Finally, Alexandra arrives—the one spark of humanity in this bleak experiment. She manages to survive not through strength or heroism, but by appealing to Adrian’s ego, convincing him that Anne Hathaway awaits him in Hollywood. It’s a clever move, but by this point, even escape feels like a moral loss.
Found Footage, Lost Humanity
Be My Cat has been praised for blurring the line between fiction and reality, but that’s like praising food poisoning for blurring the line between dinner and disaster. Yes, it’s raw and unfiltered. Yes, it feels uncomfortably real. But that realism doesn’t elevate the horror—it just makes it unpleasant.
There’s a difference between psychological horror and psychological harm. Țofei confuses the two, mistaking discomfort for depth. Watching him giggle and babble at the camera for 90 minutes isn’t revolutionary—it’s exhausting. It’s the kind of performance that makes you want to call the director’s mother and ask if he’s okay.
And while the film’s DIY aesthetic might impress film school purists, it ultimately works against itself. Found footage horror relies on escalation—on the creeping sense that something unseen is tightening its grip. Here, the only thing tightening is the audience’s jawline as we clench through another endless scene of Adrian talking to his imaginary Hollywood future.
The Cult of Pretension
The strangest thing about Be My Cat isn’t its content—it’s its reception. Critics called it “intelligent,” “meta,” even “revolutionary.” Watching it feels more like being trapped in a graduate film student’s therapy session while everyone around you insists it’s art.
There’s a difference between daring and reckless, between challenging and exploitative. Be My Cat often feels like a stunt—one man testing how far he can push the audience before they push stop. The answer, apparently, is 93 minutes.
It’s not that the movie lacks ambition. It’s that it mistakes self-obsession for insight. The film doesn’t comment on obsession—it is obsession, staring directly into the camera, unblinking and unaware that the world outside doesn’t care.
The Horror of Reality TV That Thinks It’s Cinema
If the found footage format was meant to immerse us, Be My Cat uses it as a weapon. Every frame is an invasion of personal space, every monologue a cry for validation. It’s not horror—it’s hostage footage directed by someone who thinks Stanley Kubrick would’ve loved YouTube.
There are no traditional scares here, just a constant unease—a mix of pity, revulsion, and disbelief that someone thought this was a good idea. It’s horror stripped of monsters and ghosts, replaced by the terrifying possibility that narcissism might one day qualify as a cinematic genre.
At least slasher villains have hobbies. Adrian’s only pastime is talking about Anne Hathaway like she’s a religion. You begin to feel sorry for Anne—imagining her, somewhere in Malibu, sipping coffee while blissfully unaware that a Romanian man once built a cult around her filmography.
Conclusion: Send Help, and Maybe a Therapist
By the time the camera cuts out, you don’t feel scared—you feel relieved. Be My Cat: A Film for Anne isn’t just a found footage movie; it’s a found cry for help. It’s ambitious in the way a man trying to juggle knives is ambitious—technically impressive until it all goes wrong.
Adrian Țofei wanted to make a film that would get Anne Hathaway’s attention. He succeeded, probably for all the wrong reasons. What’s left is a fascinating, nauseating curiosity—a movie that exists somewhere between avant-garde art and a restraining order.
The horror genre thrives on obsession, madness, and blurred reality. Be My Cat delivers all three, but without self-awareness, compassion, or restraint. It’s a film that eats its own meaning alive, leaving only awkward silence and the distant sound of Anne Hathaway changing her phone number.
Final Score: 3/10
A bold experiment in psychological horror that proves some footage is best left unfound. Equal parts performance art and public meltdown, it’s the cinematic equivalent of reading a stalker’s diary by flashlight—compelling, creepy, and utterly unnecessary.
