Tinsman Road – an uncommonly moving found footage creeper

In 2022 an indie film called The Outwaters changed the game for found footage horror, and set a new high-water mark for micro-budget cinema. Filmmaker Robbie Banfitch and a relatively small crew used a typically limiting framing device and told one of the most terrifying cosmic horror stories this side of H.P. Lovecraft. It redefined what could be done with it a “diegetic camera” framework, and did so while succeeding at what so many less ambitious found footagers fail miserably: making the film actually feel like a piece of literal found footage. Despite the express supernatural occurrences depicted within, if I didn’t already know it was a movie, I could have easily been convinced otherwise. 

Naturally, I’ve been waiting with bated breath for Banfitch’s follow-up film. After such an important breakout project, could his next feature live up to the hype I’ve ascribed to it?

Yes, but for very different reasons. While much less stylistically ambitious than its predecessor, Tinsman Road once again succeeds in radical adherence to its framing device. And while this slow-burn film is indeed scary as hell when it needs to be, its power comes from its verisimilitude: the characters feel like real people, the situations they find themselves in are familiar, and our protagonist (Banfitch as a fictionalized version of himself) has every reason to keep the camera rolling at all times. We’ve met these people, we’ve shared their curiosities; their boredom; their sadness. So while Tinsman Road isn’t reinventing the wheel, it does something that almost never happens in the subgenre: it moves the audience. 

The film follows Robbie Lyle, visiting his family home in New Jersey long after his sister went missing, last seen on the titular road. His aim is to make a film investigating what may have happened to her, and as such he spends his days wandering town, chatting with locals, and exploring the home, now inhabited solely by his mother Leslie (Leslie Ann Banfitch — yes, the filmmaker’s real mother). It’s a somewhat passive project, with Robbie moseying through his days and nights, and ultimately befriending a duo of local girls who he met while they were hanging out out near, you guessed it, Tinsman Road. Leslie is both hot and cold on the project, and it seems her grief has manifested in enthusiasm for the paranormal. She’s convinced that her missing daughter is communicating with her from the beyond. Robbie isn’t outright dismissive, but he does suspect that perhaps his mother isn’t in the best place. 

Until, of course, his camera catches a few happenings that are … less than easy to explain. 

This isn’t a film that leans into jump scares or shrieky moments, but there’s a veil of dread that hangs over the narrative which, when mixed with the real-world accessibility of the story and setting, is frequently quite chilling. Everyone grieves differently, and seeing how both Robbie and Leslie approach loss in different ways, and furthermore how those ways mutually serve and distort one another, is something that all of us unfortunate enough to be acquainted with tragedy can recognize, if not fully understand. While many horror films gain tension from “don’t go in there,” Tinsman Road finds a similar tension from “it would be great if you could find peace within one another.”

The plodding nature of the film’s pace may prove trying for some, but I’d hope that for the bulk of audiences it will prove, as it did for me, hypnotic. In the wake of The Outwaters, which left me sweating and haggard, it was initially a chore to find this film’s wavelength. But once I understood its intentions, and the languorous tone it sought, I found myself lost in its musings … and terrified of the dark road it was potentially leading me down. 

A road where someone could easily go missing; where the sounds of wildlife mingle with the deceptively sweet smell of rotten leaves. A road whose vastness compares only to the cavern left in the hole of a grieving heart. 

Directed by Robbie Banfitch

Written by Robbie Banfitch

Starring Robbie Banfitch, Leslie Ann Banfitch, Salem Belladonna, Heather Middleton

Not rated, 114 minutes