One of my favorite movies growing up was Independence Day. I know there are better movies, but the combination of actors and special effects made it just about perfect in my young brain. I used to drive my parents crazy not only wanting to watch it, but wanting them to bask in the glory of Randy Quaid in a jet with me, so they finally settled on a compromise. We would watch it together every 4th of July if I would shut up about it the rest of the year.
And so we did. During the years I was 8 to 14, we watched it religiously somewhere between afternoon hot dogs and evening fireworks every year. And it was awesome. But as I got older, my interests changed, I was busier, and I just...forgot. Since I was 15, I don't know that I've seen the entire movie more than once, and I'm 29 now.
So when I found a box with old movies in the storage unit of my apartment building, imagine my delight when I spied a blu-ray of Independence Day sitting right on top. I had moved into the apartment six months before, and part of the lease agreement was that each apartment had a little storage unit in the basement for excess stuff. It sounded far more grandiose than it actually was—each "unit" consisted of a small cinderblock room that was the size of a small walk-in closet. Still, it was handy if you had excess stuff. I just didn't.
I had moved to town for a job, and my furniture initially consisted of my mattress and television from home. Over the past several months I had accrued enough furniture that I didn't look like a serial killer any more, but I still was living very frugally. My first real splurge had been the week before when I bought myself a new t.v.
I was really pumped about it. 4k, hdr, and obscenely big for my smallish living room. When it got delivered, I started setting it up immediately, but that also meant moving my old t.v. I've had since college. It was one of those hulking "flat screen" televisions that had a technically flat screen, but also had a giant two-foot ass that weighed a hundred pounds. It wasn't awesome, but I admit to being a little sad as I waddle-dropped it to a piece of cardboard and slid it out and down the hall to the elevator. It was going to be my first deposit in the storage unit.
When I opened the door, I saw the box immediately. It was labeled "Private Valuables" in a spidery black marker scrawl, which struck me as slightly odd. But when I opened it up and saw Independence Day, I immediately drug the t.v. in and brought the box back upstairs with me. Feeling a wave of nostalgia fueled by a combination of putting my old t.v. to pasture and the anticipation of seeing evil aliens exterminated with a floppy disk, I pulled out the blu-ray, popped it in my console, and got ready to watch a modern classic.
The video was dark and grainy, and I could tell right away that this wasn't Independence Day. It looked to be in some kind of old, run-down gymnasium. I could see what looked like the weathered floor of a basketball court at the edge of the illumination provided by twin floodlights set up at the perimeter of the camera's view. In the center of the light was a thin, stained mattress and clear plastic tarps that covered the bedding and the surrounding floor.
The blackness outside this circle of light combined with the excited breathing of the person holding the camera made the whole thing feel claustrophobic, and the breath only quickened when a large masked man led the naked couple into view. They were bound at their neck and wrists, and it was clear that they had been beaten already. They looked toward the camera as the person holding it approached, and the man let out a terrible, low moan of despair. The woman's bottom lip trembled, but she said nothing as tears began to run down her cheeks.
I had a brief moment where I thought this was some odd, bootleg horror movie I had never seen before, but it didn't look right. Aside from no credits or music, the entire thing felt too real, even for a well-done found footage movie. And as the camera had approached the light, the picture had sharpened to an almost painful degree. I could see with agonizing detail the shape these two were in, the emotions they were feeling. They were genuinely terrified.
