Exulto Review

Exulto is a 2016 found footage short film Directed by Joe Giambrone.

I enjoyed the merging of horror fantasy with the found footage style filmmaking on display in Exulto. It sort of played out like Chronicle meets The Blair Witch Project just in a grey area in between the two. The story of someone finding a book of incantations and slowly discovering the power behind a newfound ability is unique in that regard.

As far as any technical notes, things here are pretty straightforward, being found footage it is pretty par for the course. It does have some visual trickery implemented though so less direct found footage and more along the lines of Paranormal Activity to drop another film reference in here.

I thought the acting by Giambrone was also well executed. He gave a solid performance that was not exaggerated and played this character well. I enjoyed the evolution from a more meager guy to one who becomes confident in his new standing in the world thanks to this book.

Even at 8 minutes in length I still felt like maybe one or two of the video journal entries shown could have been condensed, but the pacing at no point came to a crawl. I think if anything it was more so just seeing a few less of the title cutaways but this is a minor grievance on my part.

I will put a final note on the ending of the short which I felt like was a good subversion. The usual place to end films like this is with a big comeuppance moment but to sidestep that entirely here was a smart choice. I can always enjoy any film that takes a risk and I think Exulto takes a few throughout that definitely payoff in the end.

Overall, this is a good short film to check out. If you like found footage then you certainly won’t be disappointed here and the original take on the story is a cool one to look over. A big thank you to Joe for sharing more of his work with me and I look forward to more of it in the future.

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Cheers!

Daniel Hess

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