There is No Thought Behind Noclip (CFF)

Title: Noclip

First Non-Festival Release: TBD

Director: Gavin Charles, Alex Conn

Writer: Gavin Charles, Alex Conn

Runtime: 61 Minutes

Starring: Gavin Charles, Alex Conn

Where to Watch: Check out where to find it here

This film’s review was written after its screening at the Chattanooga Film Festival in 2024.

Gavin (Gavin Charles) and Alex (Alex Conn) decide to take a trip to their local mall in Kansas City in hopes of capturing liminal spaces on film. If they are lucky, they will stumble into the ‘Backrooms’, a series of endless liminal spaces made famous from a popular internet phenomenon. Once in the mall, their playful excursion turns to horror when they realize they have found themselves unable to leave. Their regrets solidify as hours turn to days now that their ill-thought wish becomes a reality.

Noclip is a dull, circular adventure into the concept of the internet popularized ‘Backrooms’ mythology without fully committing to its premise.

What starts as a promising found footage film exploring the phenomena that has captured the internet’s heart turns into a familiar jaunt down the path most films of this variety take. Without a clear plot, story, or even direction of what exactly is happening, Noclip essentially strings together footage of two men walking around a mall for an hour. Of course, with the premise, this makes sense, but Noclip doesn’t do anything with it.

A good film depends on either a good story or good characters, regardless of how simple or complicated they might be. Noclip has neither. There are no tangents about why this mall may or may not be home to a series of backrooms. There is no assertion that anything has happened at this mall of any merit to warrant an investigation. Noclip simply takes the audience to this place and expects a film to happen by magic. Premise alone doesn’t make a movie; there needs to be something of substance to it. Even the most reviled found footage films have a basic structure to frame the hapless directors’ footage. Noclip just shows the audience some clips that vaguely string together a haphazard story.

Which brings us to the characters, who offer little intrigue or interest throughout the interminable 61-minute affair. Gavin Charles and Alex Conn opt to play themselves in Noclip. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with this, but neither reveal anything particularly interesting about themselves that would make audience members better understand their motivations or tie back into the story. Throughout found footage films of any variety, it is expected that viewers will come to learn about the people behind the camera to better understand them and hopefully find some connection with their desire to stay alive. Noclip truly lays out what it is like to watch two guys walk around a mall and seemingly get lost in it. That’s the hook. That’s the presentation. That’s it. There’s nothing to connect, no deeper meaning behind the story, nothing. It all feels so mind-numbing.

With all this being said, it hurts to dog on indie filmmakers who are obviously passionate about their project. Clearly, their love of cinema pushed Charles and Conn to create Noclip and it’s exciting to see what can be accomplished with $37 budget, two days off work, and a dream to get accepted to a film festival. Thankfully, the medium works in their favor since most of the detractors of found footage can sometimes operate as features: namely the awkward lull before the horror sets in and the amateur performances onscreen.

There is little style and no substance behind Noclip. A found footage film that doesn’t understand the allure of the subgenre and takes viewers on a poorly paced adventure, Noclip will leave viewers begging for it to end. It just won’t be in a way most directors would seek in a reaction. The indie spirit is surely there, and it is propped up, even slightly, by its premise alone. That cannot save Noclip from being a confoundingly disappointing feature that is sure to enrage viewers in masse when it inevitably debuts on a free streaming service in the future.

Overall Score? 2/10