24 Exposures (Joe Swanberg, 2013)

In 2012, a bunch of directors collaborated on a collection of short horror films called V/H/S, all with the theme of "found footage".  Joe Swanberg, the pater familias of the mumblecore movement and one of my favorite directors, was one of these.  Though V/H/S was itself a bust, Swanberg's contribution was certainly the best of the group.  He was less interested in tinkering with horror conventions.  During most of the segment, it wasn't a horror film at all, but rather an exploration of a couple's relationship through their vacation video.  The dark twist at the end could be read as a breakup in the style of Henry VIII.  It seemed like Swanberg was just using the horror genre to allow his characters to do things that would be considered too shocking in most of his films.

24 Exposures is something of a further exploration along these lines.  An IMDB search reveals that most of the cast is shared with V/H/S.  24 Exposures isn't really a horror film, although there's lots of (fake) blood.  Rather the action centers around a photographer who films naked women in horrifically and realistically staged death poses.  Delighted by the erotic nature of death, he's placed in contrast with a depressed detective of actual homicides when one of his potential models gets murdered.  Yes, that's actually the plot.  Usually, the plots of Swanberg's movies are just window dressing, but in this case there's not much else here. 

Don't get me wrong, there are lots of interesting ideas here, but generally the acting is too poor for me to get too interested in these characters.  The man playing the detective is particularly bad; for the first five minutes or so I was certain that his character was actually "playing" a detective on a TV show.