Horror Movie Review: Invoking Yell (2023)

Set in South Chile in 1997, Invoking Yell is a found-footage horror that sees three young women venture off into the woods to shoot a music demo tape. Two of them, Andrea (María Jesús Marcone) and Tania (Macarena Carrere) are in a black metal band called Invoking Yell, and the third, Ruth (Andrea Ozuljevich) is hoping to join them. It’s her providing the camera equipment for the documentary that will go alongside the Invoking Yell demo tape.

Why the woods? It’s black metal, that’s why, and Andrea is hoping to record some unusual sounds near the site of a bus accident that cost lives a few years earlier.

It’s not a complicated story, and writer and director Patricio Valladares does keep it straight-forward enough. That is until a fairly obvious twist occurs and then things go off the deep end leaving a ton of questions behind. If this was the only issue with Invoking Yell, this would be an easier review to write, but unfortunately, this simply isn’t a good film.

It almost feels controversial to say that as everything about the story, characters, and horror should appeal. Which they do, at first. However, interest in what Invoking Yell has to offer slowly wanes as nothing happens for absolutely ages. The story grinds to a halt, the character’s antics become tiresome, the sense of dread dissipates, all in a dull miasma of nothing. It’s harsh, but the pacing of the film is horrendous.

Not only that, but it delivers on all the found footage tropes, with the worst offender being ‘shaky’ camera work. Sure, it’s supposed to be 1997 but it wasn’t freaking made in 1997, was it? At times, in particular near the end, it’s not even watchable and if you’re the kind of person to suffer from motion sickness, then be warned.

The joke is that it’s not even worth putting up with this as what follows, the ending, is head scratching in its delivery. A film like this should not be leaving you with more questions than answers, but that is exactly what happens. It’s not satisfying, it’s frustrating, and that’s before you take the journey into account. Put all of this together and you get a substandard horror film that can’t live up to its concept in any way.