Director: Ozgur Uyanik

Starring: James Powell, Tom Shaw, Lorna Beckett

“I’m trying to make myself indispensable.” (James, Resurrecting The Street Walker)

The mockumentary has been done so many times now that it would take something pretty special to grab people’s attention these days (case in point, Troll Hunter). Resurrecting The Street Walker manages this on an incredibly low budget and left me very impressed with the results, despite it ultimately not being the zombie prostitute film I thought the title was promising.

James is a budding filmmaker who’s desperate to get into the industry. He becomes a runner at a small production company in London in the hope that his hard work will eventually get him noticed and eventually move him up the filmmaking ladder.

While sorting out the company’s archives one day, James comes across some reels of The Street Walker, a (fake) 1980s video nasty that was ultimately never finished when the cast and crew went AWOL. Sensing an opportunity to make a name for himself, James convinces his boss to let him film the remaining scenes of The Street Walker and release it as “the film that was never released”. Meanwhile, James’s mate Marcus, himself a filmmaker, starts a documentary following James as he starts work on his project. 

Eventually the pressure starts to get to James and he starts losing his grip a little. The early shots he films don’t meet the approval of his boss, who assigns his irritating, bossy, snide assistant (who both despises and is despised by James) to oversee the rest of the production. A shoot in a basement goes wrong as something catches fire and the crew is trapped underground in darkness while they try to escape. A couple of weeks later, one of the actresses dies from an asthma attack. And on top of all this, James and Marcus start to get the feeling that the original Street Walker film may have actually been a snuff movie, which would explain the absence of the cast and crew.

Despite the low-budget nature of the film, Resurrecting The Street Walker does make for compelling viewing at times. The majority of the cast help the film’s authenticity with believable performances (though a couple, like James’s mum, are a bit unconvincing) and it’s well-paced throughout, and the ending – so often a problem point with this genre, as Troll Hunter and The Blair Witch Project prove – is actually really effective and disturbing without being gory or gratuitous.

I was pleasantly surprised by Resurrecting The Street Walker. It clearly didn’t cost a lot of money to make but that clearly didn’t matter to its cast and crew, who delivered a fun and creepy little mockumentary-within-a-mockmentary that’s well worth a look if you fancy something different.

WHERE CAN I SEE IT?
Resurrecting The Street Walker is only available on DVD in the UK (not in the US at the moment). It’s currently a very reasonable £3.99 at Amazon where you can get it by clicking here. If you’re a LOVEFiLM subscriber it’s also available as part of your streaming package.

If you enjoyed this review and would like to read more, here’s a complete list of reviews on That Was A Bit Mental.

Follow us on Facebook for all the latest review updates and news from the world of mental films and shit