August Underground (2001) on Netflix
Peter keeps a woman named Laura captive in his basement and brings in an accomplice who films everything on a video camera. The two men torment her while the camera records.
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- Netflix1.8/5
- IMDb3.5/104,636 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
Trailer
Plot summary
Peter is a psychopathic serial killer who keeps a woman named Laura captive in his basement. He brings an accomplice with a video camera into the house, and the two film themselves tormenting and humiliating Laura, who is tied to a chair. The pair later pick up a female hitchhiker at the roadside, assault her, and Peter beats her before leaving her there. A night out ends with the two men thrown out of a concert. The footage they shoot is presented as a degraded home video, recorded on a Hi8 camera and damaged afterward to look like an authentic tape.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about August Underground (2001)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- In 2005 Fred Vogel, the director and co-writer, was arrested in Canada on charges of transporting obscene materials when customs officials found copies of August Underground and its sequel among merchandise for the Rue Morgue Festival of Fear. The charges were dropped after he spent about ten hours in custody.
- Vogel planned to leave VHS tapes of the film in random spots across the United States, such as parks and playgrounds, for passersby to find, but abandoned the stunt after the September 11 attacks and the anthrax attacks that followed.
- Fred Vogel's directorial debut was a compromise: he wanted to make a larger-budget zombie film but believed his lack of feature-film experience would put off financiers, so he made a low-budget film instead to demonstrate his abilities.
- August Underground was shot on a Hi8 camera and then degraded in post-production so that it would look like genuine found footage.
- The singer Ethel Cain named her song "August Underground," from her 2022 album Preacher's Daughter, after Fred Vogel's film.
