Since the first creepy sepia-toned photographs haunted the silver screen, obsolete audio/visual recording technology has had an air of the otherworldly that is frequently invoked in genre cinema. But with the number of cursed VHS tapes one would think is out in the world thanks to horror movies and TV, the consumer camcorder home video remains a largely untapped well of potential psychic unease. In LANDLOCKED, writer/director Paul Owens pulls off a fascinating narrative and structural trick by taking actual home videos of his family and recontextualizing them in an unexpected way. But repurposing existing footage isn't the only draw of LANDLOCKED, where the horror lies less in what might be lurking in an abandoned house and more in its lead character's consuming obsession with revisiting and documenting the past. The single location and tiny handful of characters give the story an intimacy that frequently crosses over into claustrophobia, and the film's dream/nightmare logic builds to a series of understated but powerfully emotional reveals. LANDLOCKED is an affecting and ingenious puzzle box that sends the audience ever deeper into a labyrinth where past, present, and future collapse into each other. - Jason Coffman