Dan Asma’s debut feature 'Tribe' has been described as a compelling and unsettling journey into the Californian mountains, drawing comparisons to 'The Blair Witch Project' for its found-footage style. The film follows a retired professor, played by Asma himself, as he investigates a lost sect in the Cuyamaca mountains and Mount Shasta, uncovering Lovecraftian terrors along the way.
The protagonist, Devin, is introduced in a state of mental and physical decline, unable to drive out of the wilderness. Through his past recordings, he pieces together his research, which was triggered by the suicide of his friend Charlie, an orphan who once belonged to a mysterious cult called the Church of Heaven’s Light. Charlie was found as a child wandering alone in the Cuyamacas, bringing with him wild theories about superior beings stalking humanity.
Asma, who heads the marketing agency Buddha Jones and has cut trailers for films like 'Mother!' and 'Hereditary', uses his editing expertise to create a sharp narrative from Devin’s jumbled collection of vlogs, Zoom calls, and Facetime recordings. The investigation centres on an anomalous shipping container among the mountains, with Devin consulting mathematicians and anthropologists who add layers of exposition and conjecture. The footage also appears to contain freaky alien transmissions.
While the film bombards the viewer with archival material, it sometimes loses the pacing of a traditional found-footage horror, and the final revelations about Charlie and interdimensional themes are a bit too blatant. However, Asma effectively builds a sense of disintegration and malignancy, suggesting that the real corrupting force is our technological compulsion to record, seek meaning, and rewind to our origins.
