‘Old Wounds’ is Mostly Refreshing Found Footage [Panic Fest 2025 Review]
It’s challenging to leave a film liking so much about it while simultaneously feeling unfulfilled. Steven Hugh Nelson’s Old Wounds, a found footage horror movie principally pulling from the verisimilitude well of Patrick Brice’s Creep, is packed to the brim with remarkable filmmaking. On a technical level, Old Wounds belies its budget, finding visual flourish in the southern United States, with a cast of performers whose authenticity is unconventionally convincing. Old Wounds is strange, engaging, and low-fi in a way that surprised me. Yet, when the credits rolled, Old Wounds’ parts exceeded the sum of its whole.
Ashley (Chelsey Grant, Frogman, which gets a cute Easter Egg) and Steve (Nelson) are planning a trip to visit Ashley’s family farm. “Farm” is something of an understatement since the property is more akin to a southern compound. Never underestimate the value of enviable real estate in a horror movie, y’all. Steve insists on filming the mundanity of the trip and subsequent arrival on his phone, and to Old Wounds’ credit, there’s a plausible explanation for why he’s so insistent on doing so.
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Brian Villalobos Graham joins the duo midway through, though I won’t reveal how, and his addition adds texture to a veritable script whose dialogue never feels uncannily forced. Villalobos is credited alongside Grant and Nelson as a co-writer, and there was almost certainly a great deal of improvisational riffing. That it remains endearing for the nearly two-hour runtime is a testament to the innate craftsmanship on display.
The horror of it all is less Babak Anvari’s Wounds, and even less What Happened to Dorothy Bell (another found footage feature playing at this year’s Panic Fest). Intermittently, the camera cuts from the crispness of Steve’s iPhone to a shaky camcorder off in the distance. It’s all alluringly similar to Lost Highway or Caché, some unknown presence filming the couple without their knowledge. Fans hoping for some kind of earth-shattering reveal will be disappointed, though. Old Wounds is principally concerned with the artifice of the camera and the parts of ourselves we hide from those around us.
The final reel’s drama is often interpersonal and irregularly frightening. Interestingly, it parallels with another Panic Fest premiere, Jordan Miller’s The Only Ones. That slasher sputtered out with its overemphasis on dialogue over slashing, though Old Wounds largely avoids those pitfalls because its script remains regularly engaging. Grant, Nelson, and Villalobos are natural performers and Old Wounds is as much a hangout movie as it is a horror movie, and they’re a pretty good crowd to run with.
Also Read: ‘The Only Ones’ Slashes into Familiarity [Panic Fest 2025 Review]
There is some terror, especially in the uncertainty of it all and the script’s insistence on regularly keeping the leads in the dark. For as much weirdness as the audience witnesses, Ashley and Steve are never really aware that something is amiss. And that’s the point, really. By the end, everything will make sense, even if the firmer genre fans will be left wanting something that hits just a touch harder.
It’s at the end, despite so much I admired and loved, that a wave of indifference washed over me. There’s so much talent both behind and in front of the camera, yet the collective package of Old Wounds didn’t satisfy me as much as its distinct, individual parts. Whatever comes next, I’m undoubtedly looking forward to. Yet Old Wounds unfortunately lives up to its title. Like a scar on your arm, you might remember where you got it long after it’s healed, but you’ll be hard-pressed to remember what the wound first felt like.
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Old Wounds
Summary
Old Wounds unearths some remarkably authentic found footage scares, even if the novelty rots away before the credits roll.
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