What Happened to Dorthy Bell?      Director: Danny Villanueva JrCert: NoneStarring: Michael Hargrove, Lisa Wilcox, Asya Meadows, Arlene Arnone Bibbs, J Anthony RamosRunning Time: 1 hr 20 minsMatt Johnson’s Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie is making enough noise at the Irish box office to confirm the creative elasticity of found footage. And here comes What Happened to Dorothy Bell? – a reason to keep faith in found-footage horror.The subgenre seldom feels as emotionally fragile as this mournful, slow-burning debut from Danny Villanueva Jr, an unholy marriage of supernatural folklore and inherited trauma. Rather than chasing jump scares, the film uses such familiar conventions such as home videos, CCTV, police recordings and Zoom calls to excavate a painful family history, creating a ghost story that probes a haunting from multiple angles. Asya Meadows anchors the film with an astonishing, vulnerable performance as Ozzie Gray, who circles the mystery surrounding her grandmother Dorothy, a seemingly gentle librarian whose last days of explosive violence and suicide transformed her into the urban legend of the “Witch Librarian”.Unlike the increasingly indestructible heroines that dominate contemporary horror – see the superhuman final girls of Evil Dead Rise or Terrifier 2 and 3 – Ozzie feels painfully ordinary and a tiny bird-like presence beside her concerned dad (Michael Hargrove). Quiet, hesitant and emotionally unequipped for the demonic horrors she uncovers, her fear is entirely believable, making her nocturnal investigation in and around the library’s shadowed stacks genuinely unsettling. The library becomes the film’s greatest asset. Imagine Jem Cohen’s Museum Hours or one of Frederick Wiseman’s institutional studies played for psychological distress. The echoing marble halls and oppressive silence make for a pregnant atmosphere, subverting a place associated with knowledge, quietude and safety into something uncanny.Villanueva understands that dread flourishes in stillness and the film’s most effective sequence – a therapy session conducted over Zoom that coalesces into a horrific freeze – demonstrates how everyday technology blurs the boundaries between the uncanny and uncanny valley.The deliberate pacing is both a strength and weakness. The film occasionally feels as though it is stretching a short-film premise to feature length and its denouement perhaps lacks the devastating pay-off promised by its patient build-up. But even when the narrative falters, the rumination remains compelling.Streaming on Shudder from August 1st