Ever heard the urban legend about the married couple who decide to spend a romantic weekend in the same hotel where they once honeymooned? Well, to spice things up they order some in-room entertainment. The movie starts out rather steamy and, as it progresses, the couple in the film begin to look familiar. Finally, the couple watching the movie is horrified to recognize they are the couple on the television screen – someone had secretly videotaped them on their wedding night all those years ago!
There are few things more eerie or disturbing than discovering that you have been secretly videotaped, and it is even stranger when the videotaped events never actually happened.
While exploring their new house, the young couple Tina (Sophia Ellis) and James (Mark Grinham) discover a box of photographs, a child’s doll, Tarot cards, and an unmarked videotape in the attic. The videotape seems to be unrecorded – playing nothing but static. However, when Tina leaves the room, James sees a scene played out between the two of them, where Tina announces an unexpected pregnancy and James gets upset. The eerie thing is that this conversation had never occurred between the two of them in real life. Further, when a pregnancy test turns up positive, it is only the beginning of the strange things that the tape will reveal.
When James and Tina move
into their new house...
...They discover a box of
old items in the attic.
Content
The filmmakers certainly put a lot of effort into setting an eerie mood for this film. It opens with a very shaky handheld walking into the house, combined with creepy music and ends with a zoom into the TV, which is playing static. While this sets up the fact that all is not well in this particular house, the handheld got me a little close to being seasick, and the static initially made me think of the movie The Ring. That particular connection is probably unavoidable in a film that deals with a mysterious videotape. However, I do think that The Providence Tape lends enough of its own uniqueness to the concept in order to distinguish itself.
James’ dream sequence also follows suit, with some very disconcerting imagery and music. Although I did not really understand exactly what was going on – and in dream sequences this really isn’t much of a problem, especially if the goal is to set a mood – the images and music actually did give me goosebumps.
The film’s structure is a little random, at least in the beginning. The characters aren’t readily identified, other than the fact that they’re both wearing rings and appear to be moving into a house, so one does assume that they’re married. There is one odd and somewhat unsettling bit during the move-in sequence: at one point, a young woman walks past the house and glances at James in a rather seductive manner. He looks a little confused and surprised at seeing her, but she walks away and he shakes it off. This young woman does make an appearance later on in the film, although her face is a bit obscured, and I have to confess that I never really made the connection until I was organizing my notes for this critique. In the sequence in which this young woman re-appears, it might be a good idea to show her face a little clearer, or give a bit more of a hint that the audience has already seen her.
