We grow accustomed to the Dark—
When Light is put away—
As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp
To witness her Goodbye—A Moment—We uncertain step
For newness of the night—
Then—fit our Vision to the Dark—
And meet the Road—erect—And so of larger—Darknesses—
Those Evenings of the Brain—
When not a Moon disclose a sign—
Or Star—come out—within—The Bravest—grope a little—
And sometimes hit a Tree
Directly in the Forehead—
But as they learn to see—Either the Darkness alters—
Or something in the sight
Adjusts itself to Midnight—
And Life steps almost straight.Emily Dickinson, “We grow accustomed to the Dark”
I’m not sure what it is about public libraries that make them a rich vein for horror. Whether it’s Ghostbusters or Stephen King’s IT, or if you’re somehow spooked by 1994’s Macaulay Culkin vehicle The Pagemaster, those stacks of books can conceal all manner of dark forces. Despite treading what should be more than familiar ground with a found footage horror, Danny Villanueva Jr’s What Happened To Dorothy Bell? is one of the biggest surprises of Fantastic Fest’s 2024 lineup. Using a variety of techniques, Villanueva Jr’s film builds naturally while delivering some of the most effective found footage scares I’ve seen in some time.
The film opens on a grainy video of a puppet presentation, of the sort that might be shown on children’s TV, depicting the perhaps too-macabre-for-kids poem, There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly. Ozzie Gray (Arya Washington) watches and crafts a mask that might also be too macabre to be the creation of a child. As the video is fast-forwarded, we see Ozzie playing games with her grandmother Dorothy (Arlene Arnone Bibbs), and it’s clear that the two have a loving and special relationship.
As a retired librarian, Dorothy passes on a love of art and books to her granddaughter. But after suffering an unprovoked and traumatizing attack from Dorothy at only five years old, Ozzie is left shaken and both physically and emotionally scarred. The now-adult Ozzie (Asya Meadows) works through this trauma with an online therapist as an adult, and despite her father Darren (Michael Hargrove) insisting that his mother’s attack is due to a mental episode, Ozzie believes that a more sinister and supernatural force is behind it and sets out to uncover the truth, no matter how damaging it might be. We’re privy to some of Ozzie’s sessions with her psychiatrist Dr Robin Connelly (horror veteran Lisa Wilcox), who advises Ozzie to document her progress – including the investigation into Dorothy’s actions – in video form.
Rather than relying on a single format, What Happened To Dorothy Bell? uses Zoom calls, YouTube videos, faux-documentaries, and VHS-style sequences to build a haunting paranormal story which often feels like a screenlife horror such as Rob Savage’s Host or Zachary Donahue’s The Den but also references imagery from The Blair Witch Project and other found-footage gems. Long, static shots even seem to get a little Skinamarink-y. But it’s also very much of it’s own style and rhythm, and the scares are very, very real.
Asya Meadows is at once captivating, and subtle in her portrayal of Ozzie. She is often alone onscreen and needs to carry the weight of her internalized trauma and her mental illness at once, while also battling a malevolent supernatural entity. You can tell that Meadows is drawing on her own relationship with her grandmother, as she tells Bloody Disgusting, “My grandmother was my best friend and hero growing up, so I resonated deeply with that bond. Ozzie’s inner journey of making peace with her traumatic past, rectifying her grandmother’s name, self-discovery, and forgiveness all struck a chord with me.”
What Happened to Dorothy Bell? builds to a beautifully goopy library-set climax that kept me gripped to my seat, and which isn’t afraid to throw it’s considerable weight around that it’s been building over the rest of the film. By not confining itself to screen-centred perspectives, Villanueva Jr’s film introduces the intriguing notion that something supernatural is either being observed and real, or being conjured by Ozzie’s mental illness. Either way, Ozzie’s story is a deeply sad and hopeless one, in which one’s trauma is inescapable. If that’s not scary, I don’t know what is.
Danny Villanueva’s What Happened To Dorothy Bell? is an official selection from Fantastic Fest 2024.
