August Underground: An Unintentional Period Piece

August Underground is a good movie, even with the excessive gore and lack of plot taken into account. In fact, that's what made it work.

The sequels were just terrible and were simply an exercise in trying to be as disgusting as possible, but the "fake snuff film" idea that the first one went with was a great concept as a stand-alone film. Especially for the late 90's/early 2000's when home movies/camcorders were still a big thing and the "found footage" genre was almost entirely comprised of Cannibal Holocaust, The Last Broadcast, and The Blair Witch Project (more on that in a bit)

The first August Underground was actually pretty innovative for the time. Yeah, it's a fake snuff film with no real plot, but that's why it worked back in the era it came out in.

When this movie came out, The Blair Witch Project was still sort of culturally relevant but was also cheapened by Blair Witch 2 and a lot of shallow parodies like the one that Pauly Shore did. The "found footage" concept was still kind of a new thing and it wasn't the cliche it ultimately became in the wake of Paranormal Activity.

This was also the era when the internet was still in its infancy and a lot of the weird and disturbing urban legends started to really circulate again. A lot of the urban legends of 90's internet culture were focused on crime and disturbing phenomenons such as serial killers, sadistic predators, and a lot of the old urban myths of the 1970's started to get popular again, such as the "snuff film"

August Underground is the kind of movie that could have only worked in the era it was released, and it would likely have earned more respect if it weren't for the sequels (especially the second one)