If you ever wished The Blair Witch Project had better hair, more eyeliner, and a Chilean accent that could summon Satan, Invoking Yell might be your dark little prayer answered. Patricio Valladares’ found-footage head-trip about three women recording a black metal demo in the Chilean woods shouldn’t work — but it absolutely does. It’s grimy, funny, unnerving, and weirdly heartwarming, in that “we’re all going to die, but at least we got the track down” sort of way. This is a horror movie that bleeds atmosphere like a stuck pig in corpse paint. It’s raw, noisy, and completely unpretentious — a rare beast in the era of hyper-stylized horror. It feels real enough to make you question whether these girls actually vanished into the forest and left behind the world’s most cursed demo tape. It’s 1997 in the south of Chile — a time when the internet was still dial-up and black metal was still trying to convince people it wasn’t just an elaborate prank. Our heroines (and likely future missing-persons poster girls) are Andrea (María Jesús Marcone), Tania (Macarena Carrere), and Ruth (Andrea Ozuljevich), the members of a fledgling black metal band named Invoking Yell. They head into the woods to record a demo — because of course they do. Recording in an actual studio would be too easy, too sterile, too not possibly haunted. Their goal is to capture not just music, but psychophonic sounds: ghostly voices and noises from beyond. In other words, they’re trying to collaborate with the dead. What could go wrong? Let’s get this out of the way: the film looks like it was shot on a camcorder found in a pawn shop — and that’s exactlywhy it works. Valladares captures that grimy VHS aesthetic that modern “nostalgia horror” usually fakes with filters. The handheld footage here isn’t slick; it’s jittery, imperfect, and often barely comprehensible — just like the best black metal demos. And because this is found footage, we get all the genre staples: the awkward zooms, the forest at night, the flashlight that dies at the worst possible moment, the muffled screams. Yet it never feels lazy or derivative. It’s alive, pulsing with the same raw energy that made early ’90s black metal both fascinating and deeply concerning to everyone involved. If The Blair Witch Project was a student film that accidentally traumatized a generation, Invoking Yell is the punk zine version — sweaty, low-budget, and unapologetically obsessed with noise and chaos. The dynamic between the three women is the film’s bloody beating heart. Andrea’s the ambitious one — the kind of person who believes artistic purity can justify mild possession. Tania’s the skeptic, wielding sarcasm as her only line of defense against the supernatural. Ruth’s the dreamer, both vulnerable and a little too spiritually open for her own good. Together, they’re a walking disaster, and it’s glorious. Their bickering feels natural — half friendship, half volcanic ego clash. You can tell these girls would absolutely fight about mic placement, then immediately risk their lives together for the sake of “atmosphere.” They’re not stock horror victims — they’re musicians, which means they’re already a little self-destructive. When things start getting weird in the woods, they don’t run. They record. Most horror movies punish curiosity. Invoking Yell celebrates it — then kills you for good measure. There’s something refreshing about a film where the characters want to commune with the darkness. These aren’t clueless teens wandering into cursed territory; they’re chasing the very thing that will devour them. It’s a perfect metaphor for black metal itself: the allure of danger, the seduction of extremity, the idea that to create something truly raw, you have to flirt with oblivion. When the supernatural begins to leak into their recordings, the film leans into paranoia and sensory overload. You start hearing voices layered into the static. Is it feedback? Is it the wind? Or did Ruth actually just capture an EVP session with Beelzebub’s intern? The ambiguity is delicious. Despite the grim premise, Valladares sneaks in a streak of dark humor that keeps the film from drowning in its own nihilism. There’s something inherently funny about watching these serious, corpse-painted musicians trudge through the mud, arguing about microphones while trying not to get hexed. The dialogue brims with deadpan absurdity. “If we die,” one of them mutters, “at least the mix will be good.” It’s that kind of fatalistic humor only artists understand — the sense that the art matters more than the flesh producing it. And yes, the film occasionally winks at the ridiculousness of black metal’s obsession with authenticity. There’s a moment where one of the girls insists, “We can’t fake it — the spirits will know.” It’s both funny and weirdly poignant, like a trve kvlt version of Spinal Tap. If you’ve ever recorded music on bad equipment, you’ll feel this movie in your bones. The hiss, the hum, the endless tweaking of cables — all here, rendered with loving detail. The fact that the characters are using this process to summon the dead just feels like a natural escalation of the DIY spirit. The film’s realism makes the horror hit harder. The possession scenes aren’t flashy or CGI-heavy — they’re subtle, creepy, and grounded in the kind of exhaustion only creative obsession can cause. You get the sense that these women are unraveling not because of ghosts, but because they’re artists. And that’s the real beauty of Invoking Yell: it treats creation itself as a kind of haunting. Without spoiling specifics, let’s just say that by the final scene, the project has gone way off the rails — and straight into the abyss. What begins as a creative exercise becomes a descent into madness, and the final “recording” is something that would make even the most die-hard metalhead politely back away from the merch table. It’s an ending that feels inevitable and perfect: the music is complete, but the cost is unspeakable. The line between art and sacrifice vanishes, leaving behind only a reel of tape and a sound that could make your soul short-circuit. In other words — it rocks. Invoking Yell is the rare found-footage horror film that remembers why the subgenre worked in the first place: authenticity. It doesn’t rely on cheap jump scares or CGI goo; it lets the grain, the static, and the awkward silences do the heavy lifting. It’s intimate, unsettling, and oddly funny — like if The VVitch had been shot by three goth girls with bad equipment and worse judgment. Yes, it’s slow in spots. Yes, you’ll occasionally wish someone had brought a flashlight that worked. But that’s all part of its charm. Horror this lo-fi feels alive, like a secret you weren’t supposed to find. Patricio Valladares doesn’t just direct a horror film — he resurrects the grimy, fearless spirit of true underground art. Invoking Yell is messy, loud, and gloriously human. It’s a love letter to black metal, female friendship, and the terrifying beauty of chasing the muse straight into the dark. Rating: 8.5/10 — A headbanging séance where the amps hum, the forest listens, and the ghosts never miss their cue.The Blair Witch Goes on Tour — and She’s Into Black Metal Now
The Setup: Three Girls, One Demo, Zero Survival Instincts
Found Footage Done Right (and Poorly Lit, as God Intended)
The Band: Sisterhood of the Doomed Pants
Horror Through a Headbanger’s Lens
The Humor: Corpsepaint and Coffee Breath
A Love Letter to Lo-Fi and Lo-Sanity
The Ending: The Demo Tape From Hell
The Verdict: Feedback Never Sounded So Good
