Self(ie) Incrimination
Self-Defenseless
Thanks to everyone who voted for the next Crime Rx topic. By popular demand, the subsequent dispatch will be Don’t Go There: bad things happening at the library, the opera house or other cultural, entertainment and public venues. Also, something about a prison swimming pool.
This week, we take a look at two films, both from auteurs unable to resist the most confounding movement of the surveillance age, Dumblecore—the film genre in which the cast and crew are unable to resist becoming their own witnesses.
Found Footage: Simi Valley Heist (2025)
A promising debut from an ensemble cast, no credited director. Limited release beginning January 21, 2026, Ventura County Superior Court.
The first act is genuinely accomplished, the crew breaking and entering not through a door but through the roof of Dr. Conkey’s Candy and Coffee Shop, adjacent to their target, the 5-Star Jewelry & Watch Repair. A bold misdirect, enhanced by the crew spray painting the security cameras once inside. For a gripping twenty minutes, Simi Valley Heist is a taut, competent procedural about professionals who understood the assignment.
The film then makes a catastrophic tonal error: introducing a single-cam set-up using their own camera.
The single-cam footage not only captures the heist in vibrant HD but continues to the after party , where the ensemble is filmed sorting the stolen jewelry. In a jaw-dropping third act pivot from a heist thriller to direct evidence, a lead player breaks the fourth wall—wearing no mask.
It’s here that the Dumblecore genre reveals itself. Simi Valley was never a heist film. It’s a slow-burn tragedy about people who knew surveillance cameras were the enemy, but undone by vanity and hubris, become their own.
The performances are committed. The cinematography excellent—easily holding up in court. The ending—suspects charged using special allegations under Prop 36, which accounts for excessive losses and crimes committed in concert. All with the grim inevitability of Greek theater.
★★☆☆☆ One star for the roof work. One for the lighting. None for the protagonists, who at the time of this review had not been optioned for a sequel.
Ride or Die: The South LA Pursuit (2024)
A domestic drama. Improvised. Upcoming limited release, date TBD.
The inciting incident, a robbery, happens off-screen in Beverly Hills, followed by a getaway and a traffic stop in South LA where the three-man ensemble scatters in different directions. Two are apprehended by Hawthorne PD, and written out of the script. The third, our lead, escapes and calls for help.
Enter the supporting actress. Arriving to stand by her man in a silver KIA—she promptly steals not only the scene but the rest of the movie.
From this point the film abandons the Dumblecore genre entirely and becomes a cautionary tale about toxic relationships. The male lead drives the KIA, livestreams and announces to the internet and the LA County Sheriff’s deputies simultaneously, “I don’t want to go back to jail” with the tortured conviction of a man who believes he’s still the hero of this story.
He’s not. She is.
The film’s most (and only) compelling performance comes from the passenger seat, delivered by an actress who understands exactly what movie she’s in. Her single line of dialogue, the finest in the entire Dumblecore canon, and worthy of study by students of film everywhere:
“It’s over, bro. It’s over.”
In four words, she delivers both the verdict and the review.
The pursuit ends in a cul-de-sac in Culver City, a dead end with the irony well-deserved. The livestream, having done nothing to keep him out of jail—the opposite—succeeds admirably in its actual purpose: the charges brought against him, including (but not limited to), carjacking, felony reckless evading, and ex-felon in possession of a firearm.
★☆☆☆☆ for the lead. ★★★★★ for the supporting actress—who gave the only honest performance in the film, and then, in the twist the genre so rarely earns, declined to show up for the accolades.
She was right. It was over.