Magnet Releasing will bring Man Finds Tape — a taut, unnerving exploration of digital-age unease — to select cinemas and digital platforms on 5 December 2025. The film marks the feature debut of Texas-born filmmakers Peter Hall and Paul Gandersman (our interview with them HERE), whose work navigates the space where everyday life collides with the uncanny.
The story centres on Lucas Page, a YouTuber who unexpectedly rises to online notoriety after uploading a series of videos he claims are from his childhood. As skepticism grows, Lucas seeks out his estranged sister, Lynn, sending her a newly unearthed clip: a broad-daylight murder captured on security cameras in their hometown of Larkin, Texas. Their tentative reunion quickly takes a darker turn, revealing long-buried secrets and a sinister force tied to the town’s charismatic but troubling reverend.
The ensemble cast includes Kelsey Pribilski, William Magnuson, John Gholson, Brian Villalobos, and Nell Kessler, each contributing to the film’s unsettling sense of verisimilitude.
Ahead of the release, CinemaChords’ Howard Gorman spoke with John Gholson, Brian Villalobos and Nell Kessler about inhabiting characters shaped by the found-footage and faux-documentary framework. They reflected on how the sub-genre informed their approach, balancing documentary-style realism with traditional acting methods, and how research into real-world cases and investigative media helped ground their performances. The actors also considered the moral and psychological pressures embedded in small-town life — how faith and communal scrutiny could be protective but also constraining — and how the film’s preoccupation with viral content, online obsession and the fragility of memory shaped their interpretation of character motivations, sometimes as deliberate commentary on social media culture, at other times as a subtle consequence of the narrative.
Magnet Releasing releases Man Finds Tape in select theaters and on digital platforms on December 5, 2025.
You can read our full review HERE.
