When I first heard about The Man with the Black Umbrella, naturally I thought of the Umbrella Man. Surely some of you did as well. And while I was expecting a horror movie based on that real conspiracy theory, that’s not at all what I got. That being said, Ricky Umberger’s movie feeds a need, even if it is too unflavored and familiar-tasting. It’s certainly nothing innovative for those who watch found-footage stories on the regular.
True crime and POV horror intersect, once more, in The Man with the Black Umbrella. The difference now is our main character, Ryan (Max Johnson), isn’t looking into a random cold case he found online or is spotlighting for a podcast. It’s totally personal for him as he and a hired investigator named Jack (Robert Bigley) explore the unsolved murder of Ryan’s sister. And as a morsel of recorded footage shows, and as the movie’s title broadcasts, the perpetrator is a man who can only be identified by the black umbrella he carries.
Mystery-wise, there’s really not a lot to go on at the beginning, and that’s done in our best interest. That way the story is more like an even-leveled journey for both us and the characters. The road to answers, though, is never one full of huge jolts; the fact that Ryan’s father was also murdered years ago isn’t a seismic coincidence, much less a plot point delivered without obviousness. And there being an umbrella-carrying, creeping and enigmatic suspect just points to the supernatural. Nevertheless, it’s not your foresight in what’s to come that hinders The Man with the Black Umbrella.
My attraction to found footage, as a sub-genre, is its typical ability to behave unlike a traditional movie and be more immersive. Unfortunately, The Man with the Black Umbrella does what the recent House on Eden did, albeit to a lesser degree, and that’s feel too rehearsed and too tailored to virality. Every line is so scripted, and there’s no sense of the real—tedium, cold moments—to make the unreal shocking. It’s all been pared down to something with no semblance of authenticity.
It is hard to get past the transparent acting, unnatural interactions between characters, and odes of cherry-picked dialogue, but the movie’s third act at least has the good decency to turn a paper-thin story into one long chase scene. The prior series of revelations didn’t come as a surprise, but simply giving us Ryan on the run from the answers he so wanted, offers mild amusement and a hard look at the director’s technical talents.
I turned off The Man with the Black Umbrella not feeling entirely dissatisfied, but I also felt as if I had just watched a very long TikTok. Nothing about it was the least bit spontaneous-seeming or controversial, and there was no sense of who the main character was, either. Nevertheless, if you can hold out until the end, the conclusion is a marathon of simple pleasures: jump scares, uninterrupted panic, and a merciless outcome that you saw coming a mile away. I’ll take what I can get.
Tales from the Paulside 
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