MTMO bills itself as a docudrama, a blending of documentary and fictional storytelling to tell a story. In this case the story in question is about a cryptozoological figure, Momo, who was the Missouri equivalent of Bigfoot for a period of times in the 1970’s. I have no problem with the concept and was looking forward to seeing what this show had to offer. In fact, I’ve enjoyed other shows of this nature in the past. Ideally, you would like to provide a fictional account that is entertaining and gives some visuals to the informative parts of the video. Unfortunately, MTMO fails on both accounts.
I’m going to start off with the documentary portion of the movie. Ideally, this should be the easiest portion of the movie and the one which, even if time consuming, a slam dunk to deliver. You know what your topic is and you know what you want to educate your viewing audience on. Whether you believe in crypto-zoology, Bigfoot or Momo, the purpose of this movie is, ostensibly, to give you some reason to wonder or believe in this account. They featured several “prominent” crypto-zoologists in the movie itself. However, the documentary portion of the film focuses more on the history of the town, the ironically named Louisiana, Missouri. When we do get interview quotes about the, reportedly, factual incidents in the 1970’s we get a group of people who scoff at the incident or don’t remember it. Couple that with most of the “factual” accounts of the central encounter are encapsulated in the fictional part of the film. So, let’s go there.
First is the video quality. While there are parts of the movie that have had a video grain filter applied to them, it is not universal across the fictional part of the film. This is glaring and grating. Additionally, the movie was not shot film and it retains the visual clarity of a digital recording. While it was not necessary to shoot the movie on film, it was necessary to manipulate the image later to try and approximate the analog clarity of 1970’s film. This mistake is further compounded when they splice in actual 1970’s horror film footage thus illustrating what exactly is missing.
MTMO promised me an informative but fun look at the Momo incidents in 1972. It failed on both accounts. The movie does not contain much factual information at all and what information it does present is either undercut or presented within a fictional element. In fact, they have one woman on admitting that she hoaxed some Momo footprints during the time the incidents were taking place. The fictional elements of the film are also a failure, failing to create and maintain the illusion of “found footage”. This film might have been something hilariously informative but instead it was a chore. Bad in all the worst ways instead of bad in all the best ways.
Acting – 2 of 5 Stars
Cinematography – 1 of 5 Stars
Production – 2 of 5 Stars
Writing – 1.5 of 5 Stars
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Production Company – Small Town Monsters
Director – Seth Breedlove
Author Profile
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Nemesis is a poet, writer and author of the upcoming novel The Long Game. He is a writer of science fiction and supernatural thrillers. Besides novels and short stories he writes for UK based ASAP Comics developing new stories for Level 8 and OPSEC. Nem is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and tries to bring those experiences into his writing.
He lives and works out of his home in Riverside, California with his wife and three children. When not writing he enjoys reviewing comic books and graphic novels for ComicCrusaders.com and living the Southern California life with his family.
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