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Taped Up Memories (2023)

Taped Up Memories (2023)

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My quick rating – 2.3/10. Another day, another “recovered footage” horror flick promising authenticity and delivering a headache. Taped Up Memories claims to be assembled from a single damaged camcorder found at a murder site in southern England, circa 2003. What follows is not so much terrifying as it is tedious, a chaotic patchwork of drunken rambling, awkward patriotism, and one very annoying hitchhiker.

The setup is familiar to me: a group of friends heads into the countryside for a weekend of partying. Spirits are high until they pick up a hitchhiker who, instead of saying thanks, launches into bouts of philosophical trash talk and petty harassment. His grievance? Their ambitions. Their life choices. Hard to tell — he’s less a compelling villain and more a drunk Facebook rant in human form.

One of the film’s strangest choices is its attempt to inject post-9/11 war patriotism… into a British found footage movie. Despite none of the cast sounding remotely American, they suddenly rally behind the idea of Alan joining the war effort “for 9/11.” Look, global empathy is real — but the intensity of the dialogue feels like it wandered in from a completely different country, genre, and writing session.

As for the found footage style, the filmmakers lean heavily into the “we only have one tape” gimmick — meaning scenes are constantly overwritten, chopped, or interrupted by earlier recordings. In theory, that could’ve been clever. In practice, it’s disorienting and nonsensical. Anyone who actually lived through the era of MiniDV tapes knows: yes, overwriting happened accidentally… but not in perfectly curated story beats with thematic transitions.

To its credit, you can tell the editors tried. They attempt to assign each timestamp to a character or emotional beat. Unfortunately, it never gels. Instead of fleshing out personalities, the filler footage only pads the runtime and tests patience. There’s one mildly amusing clip of the resident drunk being roasted — the lone spark in a bonfire of boredom.

When the long-promised murders finally roll around, they land with the impact of a damp sponge. No tension. No payoff. And the ending? So uneventful it genuinely feels like the filmmakers were teasing a sequel nobody asked for.

I’ll admit, I’m already biased against found footage — but every so often, one comes along and proves why the genre can work. Taped Up Memories is not one of those. It’s a stitched-together slog that mistakes format for substance, realism for repetition, and atmosphere for dead air.

Taped Up Memories (2023) #jackmeatsflix
Taped Up Memories (2023)

If interested, FoundTV seems to be the only streamer carrying this one. Or buy the Blu-ray on Amazon. 🙂

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