The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007) review

This fake documentary is about a nameless serial killer operating in the New York and Pennsylvania areas who gets "better" at his trade as he continues on his rampage and winds up fixated on a young woman named Cheryl Dempsey (Stacy Chbosky) that he captures and turns into his slave - authorities also mention he kept a massive collection of videotapes detailing his heinous crimes.  There's the tiniest seed of a good idea in here, but it's majorly whiffed in the lame-brained presentation: the talking heads segments are clearly staged and the "found footage" doesn't look like authentic VHS-type recordings and instead just run through a variety of after-effects.  Any attempt to be "menacing" is undermined by the editing process: when it cuts from the lunatic dispatching his victims in all sorts of ways to community theater-level "acting," it yanks the proverbial rug from under itself.  But the creepiest thing in this has to be the balloon fetish: what is up with that?