The found-footage sub-genre is getting another tenant, and this one's bringing a camera crew. Paranormal Investigations arrives July 24th from Chroma, dropping a ghost-hunting TV team into a haunted Southern estate for their season premiere. By dawn, they're dead. The recovered footage tells the rest. Jamie Bernadette leads the cast, and director Raymond Wallace is aiming his lens squarely at the audience.
REALITY TV MEETS RECOVERED FOOTAGE
The premise is tight. A paranormal reality show enters the Hennesy House. They don't make it out. That structural promise, that we are watching the final recordings of dead people, gives the film a built-in ticking clock. Wallace isn't just making another haunted house movie. He's interrogating the spectacle. The director spent years in news and documentary production before shifting to narrative film, and he built this project around a specific, uncomfortable question: how much do we really want to see?
Wallace stated it directly: "We're surrounded by violence, tragedy, and real-life drama on television, online, and in our social feeds. At the same time, we've become fascinated with people who are willing to push boundaries for attention, fame, or content. The film asks some simple questions: How much do we really want to see? When should someone stop filming? And what responsibility do we have as the audience watching it happen?"
That's a loaded framework for a horror-comedy. The genre has always exploited voyeurism. Wallace is pulling at that thread from the inside. The similar films in this DNA line range from the austere dread of Lake Mungo to the demonic possession chaos of Don't Look at the Demon. Paranormal Investigations occupies the space between, blending the mockumentary format with the supernatural and the satirical.
BERNADETTE IN THE CROSSHAIRS
Casting Jamie Bernadette as Kelsey is a pointed move. Bernadette built her reputation in aggressive, physical horror, carrying projects like I Spit on Your Grave: Déjà Vu and She Rides Shotgun. She's a scream queen who does the heavy lifting in grueling, blood-soaked territory. Putting her at the center of a reality-TV satire about a ghost-hunting crew creates an immediate tension. Audiences who know her work will expect a certain kind of brutality. Wallace might be using that expectation as a trap door.
She's backed by a crew of investigators. David J. Rivera plays Matt, John T. Witt plays Virgil, Giselle Pina plays Alexis Johnson, Tatiana Robledo plays Fran, Logan Stem plays Steve, and Nick Oprea plays Logan. Terry Schappert rounds out the cast. This is a full television production unit inside the fiction, which means Wallace has the capacity to weaponize the multiple-camera format. Every crew member is a potential victim and a potential cameraperson.
SEVENTY-SIX MINUTES OF BAIT
The film runs 76 minutes. That is lean. It suggests Wallace knows exactly how long he can stretch the reality-TV joke before it snaps. Found footage lives and dies on pacing. Bloat is the enemy. At an hour and sixteen minutes, Paranormal Investigations is making a bet on compression over sprawl. The tagline, "The footage they never wanted you to see," is a classic found-footage lure, but the horror-comedy genre classification indicates Wallace is aware of the cliché. He's using it as a springboard for the satire, not hiding behind it as a crutch.
The film hits Apple TV, Prime Video, and Fandango at Home on July 24th via Chroma. For a July release, this is counter-programming to the bloated summer theatrical slate. It's a tight, mean little VOD proposition with a director who has a specific axe to grind about audience complicity. The question isn't whether the Hennesy House is haunted. The question is whether we'll recognize ourselves in the audience that kept the cameras rolling.