‘Fraud’ (review)

Executive Produced by David Gordon Green,
Jody Hill, Danny McBride, Brandon James
Produced by Riel Roch-Decter, Sebastian Pardo
Written and Directed by Dean Fleischer-Camp

Ok now, the movie Fraud lists itself on IMDB as a documentary and provides the synopsis of, “A Struggling family commits fraud.”

Now let’s first state that this clearly is not a real documentary and apparently the “director” has already admitted as much.

Fraud is however a re-edit of a family’s home movies along with some added fictionalized scenes arranged to tell a story.

To be honest I knew little about the movie Fraud when I started watching the film and didn’t know it was supposed to be a “documentary” until afterward.

Instead, I had just spent the movies fifty three minute running time thinking I was watching a poorly made found footage film. To pass this off as a documentary seems a bit silly as I doubt that if these people had committed the crimes portrayed in the movie that they wouldn’t have been stupid enough to video record the planning, execution, and cover up of the crimes and that they probably wouldn’t openly include their rather young children in the crimes either.

So long rant short, Fraud, as a story seems far-fetched and unbelievable as a work of fiction, much less as a documentary. The real fraud is in trying to pass this movie off as a documentary, or even as a movie.

Fraud is now playing at the IFP Media Center in New York