Smile for the Camera—It’s Probably Cursed
Every once in a while, a found footage movie comes along that doesn’t just recycle the formula—it dismantles the camera, reassembles it backwards, and asks the audience, “Still sure you want to watch this?” Butterfly Kisses (2018) is that film. It’s part horror, part mockumentary, and part meta-critique of the very genre it inhabits—a cinematic Frankenstein’s monster built out of urban legends, academic theory, and existential dread.
If The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity had a baby raised by Ghost Hunters and Werner Herzog, this would be it.
The Setup: Don’t Watch the Tapes—So Naturally, He Does
Our story begins with Gavin York (Seth Adam Kallick), a down-on-his-luck wedding videographer whose career is dying faster than his camera battery. While rummaging through his in-laws’ basement—because in horror, no good deed ever begins with “cleaning the basement”—he finds a dusty box of videotapes labeled DON’T WATCH.
Naturally, he watches them. Because in horror films, common sense is like blinking in the face of a supernatural entity: fatal.
The tapes reveal a decade-old student film by Sophia (Rachel Armiger) and Feldman (Reed DeLisle), two aspiring documentarians investigating the local legend of “Peeping Tom”—a demonic figure who appears if you stare down the Ilchester Tunnel at midnight without blinking for a full hour. Blink once, and he gets closer. Blink twice, and he’s in your face—literally, fluttering his eyelashes in the most disturbing case of personal space violation since your last dental exam.
Peeping Tom: The Patron Saint of Optometrists
Peeping Tom may not be the scariest monster in horror history, but he’s one of the most creatively unnerving. Forget claws or fangs—this guy weaponizes eyelids. Every time someone blinks, he inches closer, like a demonic game of Red Light, Green Light played by someone who desperately needs moisturizer.
The concept is absurd, yes, but absurd in that perfect creepypasta way: specific enough to feel plausible, silly enough to keep you second-guessing yourself when your eyes start to water.
Director Erik Kristopher Myers knows that fear isn’t about what you see—it’s about what you almost see before your eyes betray you. Watching this film, you start to sympathize with Sophia and Feldman’s descent into madness because, honestly, you’re trying not to blink too.
Found Footage Meets Found Ambition
Unlike most found footage films—which typically boil down to shaky cam chaos and people yelling “Did you hear that?!” in the dark—Butterfly Kisses is clever enough to use the format against itself.
It’s not one film—it’s three stacked like cursed Russian dolls:
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The 2004 student documentary about Peeping Tom.
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Gavin’s 2015 footage, documenting his obsession with proving the legend real.
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The 2018 meta-documentary, where the actual director (played by the actual director) films Gavin’s unraveling.
It’s a cinematic Möbius strip of madness—each layer commenting on the other until you’re not sure who’s exploiting whom. Is Gavin faking it? Are the students real? Is the director complicit? Or are all of them just moths drawn to the same cursed flame?
By the end, you start wondering if you watching it is part of the film’s curse. Congratulations—you’re now a character too.
The Horror of Ambition
At its core, Butterfly Kisses isn’t just about ghosts—it’s about obsession. Gavin isn’t haunted by Peeping Tom so much as by his own failure. He wants to prove himself as a filmmaker so badly that he burns down his life chasing something that might not even exist.
It’s a deliciously dark metaphor for creative ambition: art as a kind of haunting. The more Gavin pushes to prove the tapes are real, the more he becomes a part of their fiction. By the time his family leaves him and his sanity starts slipping, it’s unclear whether he’s documenting supernatural events or just filming his own nervous breakdown for Vimeo.
You don’t need a monster to make that terrifying—just a camera, a dream, and an unpaid electric bill.
Found Footage, but Make It Academic
Myers doesn’t just direct a horror movie—he writes a term paper about one. The film gleefully skewers the tropes of the genre, dissecting them with the precision of a film theory professor who secretly worships The Blair Witch Project.
He even ropes in Blair Witch co-director Eduardo Sánchez for a cameo, where Sánchez appears on a radio show to mock Gavin’s footage as a cheap knockoff. That’s not just a wink at the audience—that’s an eye roll so big it summons Peeping Tom himself.
The meta-commentary is both hilarious and unsettling. By breaking the fourth wall and then the fifth and sixth for good measure, Butterfly Kisses turns found footage into found philosophy.
The Cast: Eyelid Actors Anonymous
Rachel Armiger and Reed DeLisle, as the doomed student filmmakers, sell their gradual unraveling with unnerving conviction. You believe they’ve stared at that tunnel too long. You believe they’re seeing something they shouldn’t. You also believe they desperately need eye drops.
Seth Adam Kallick, meanwhile, gives Gavin York the kind of manic energy normally reserved for conspiracy YouTubers and men who yell at pigeons. Watching his slow transformation from hopeful filmmaker to wide-eyed lunatic is both tragic and darkly funny.
When he’s ranting about how “the footage has to be real,” you can almost hear every indie director who ever mortgaged their house for a passion project.
The Mood: Paranoia, Pixelated
Visually, the film is pure DIY dread—grainy VHS fuzz, handheld digital footage, and moments of disorienting quiet that stretch just long enough for your brain to start inventing things in the shadows.
The editing plays a cruel trick on your nerves: jump cuts mimic blinking, making you feel like you’re the one summoning Peeping Tom. It’s a rare film that makes the audience physically uncomfortable without resorting to gore. Here, the horror is in the tension between frames—between the seen and the unseen.
If you’ve ever sat in the dark editing footage at 2 a.m. and thought, “Did that just move on its own?” this movie will hit you like a caffeine overdose from Hell.
The Ending: Blink and You’ll Miss the Madness
Without spoiling too much, let’s just say Butterfly Kisses sticks the landing in a way that’s equal parts tragic and twisted.
Gavin’s fate is inevitable—by the time he’s running into that tunnel like a man chasing his own delusion, you already know he’s doomed. But it’s what happens afterward—the footage, the packages, the unanswered questions—that makes the film linger.
And then there’s Sophia, mutilating her eyelids to escape Peeping Tom—a moment so grotesque and poetic it could double as performance art. By the time the credits roll, you’re left wondering not just who summoned the demon, but whether art itself was the real curse.
Final Thoughts: Don’t Blink, Don’t Stop Filming
Butterfly Kisses is one of the few found footage films that feels like it’s found something new. It’s meta without being smug, scary without being cheap, and funny in that “I think I might be losing my mind” kind of way.
It’s a horror film about making horror films, a critique of obsession disguised as a ghost story, and a cautionary tale for every filmmaker who’s ever whispered, “Maybe this one will be my Blair Witch.”
It’s not flawless—some pacing hiccups and Gavin’s meltdown teeter between tragedy and comedy—but even its imperfections feel deliberate, like the static between transmissions from the void.
In short: Butterfly Kisses isn’t just a found footage movie. It’s a found fever dream, a love letter to artistic madness, and the rare horror film that dares you not to blink.
Just… don’t watch it in the dark. And maybe keep the eye drops handy.
