Be My Cat: A Movie for Anne (2015) Review – A Terrifyingly Realistic Study Of Obsession

Welcome to Knockout Horror. Today we are reviewing Adrian Tofei’s critically acclaimed Be My Cat: A Movie for Anne from 2015.

A simple yet compelling story

The plot here is pretty simple. A Romanian man who has an unhealthy obsession with the actor Anne Hathaway decides to make a movie to convince her to fall in love with him. The only catch? Adrian’s performance “style” goes a little beyond simple method acting.

Full disclosure, I have been wanting to check this movie out for ages. The concept sounded super interesting and bizarre enough to warrant further investigation. It just so happens that we never got around to it. It comes up fairly frequently in Reddit’s horror community so I jumped on the chance to watch as part of our Found Footage Suggested by Reddit feature. 

Well what do you know? Literally a day after we watched it, writer, director, star of the show himself Adrian Tofei dropped in on the Found Footage subreddit with a post of his own. Detailing the 33 movies that inspired him when making Be My Cat. What a weird quirk of timing. Pretty neat, though, as it confirmed a few things my fiancée and I suspected while watching. Such as Mr Bean being an influence in the character’s development. Something my fiancée remarked on half-way through the movie.

His post also seems to have encouraged some people to check out one of my favourite found footage movies of all time — Exhibit A. A movie that he deems to be the greatest found footage he has seen and, apparently, inspired him to invite Brittany Ashworth to have a part in Be My Cat. An offer which she, unfortunately, refused. Exhibit A is a brutally realistic and uncompromising movie. A trait which Be My Cat shares. 

Uncompromisingly realistic

Be My Cat is a movie that is quite shocking in its realistic portrayal of psychopathy, violence and delusion. There is very little here that doesn’t come across as unrelentingly convincing. Adrian is a lonely man who lacks friends and suffers from an altered pattern of thinking.

“Be My Cat is a movie that is quite shocking in its realistic portrayal of psychopathy, violence and delusion.”

He is desperate to meet Anne Hathaway but he is also trapped within the confines of his small, Romanian, home town. Bullied relentlessly as a child, he has a deep-seated hatred of all things male and is terrified of the world at large. He can’t travel and can’t leave the small area he feels safest. Which forces him to come up with an alternate plan.

That plan just so happens to consist of making a movie for Anne to show her his acting skills in the hope she will come to be with him as his co-star. This movie, however, involves Adrian depicting a number of murders of unsuspecting women. Adrian is a character who is warped in his belief system but also innocent in a way that, perhaps, muddies his view of consequence. Creating a character who is deeply unsettling in both his actions and his ruthless lack of compassion.

An interesting process

Tofei employed a very specific technique to portray the events of the movie and to capture that disturbing realism. Namely, recording 25 hours of footage, only using first takes and improvising the majority of the dialogue. When that was complete, he went through the footage bit by bit and edited together the significant moments into one feature length presentation.

It’s a wickedly interesting style of filmmaking and takes even method acting to a whole new level. The result is a film that is wildly chaotic and frighteningly authentic. I felt a stark sense of familiarity; likely due to the similarities shared with the video diaries of the Bjork Stalker Ricardo López.

“If you didn’t know any better, you could be convinced into thinking these were the videos of an actual killer.”

If you didn’t know any better, you could be convinced into thinking these were the videos of an actual killer. Adrian’s disordered thinking and poorly thought out logic is so reminiscent of real-life murderers. Tofei’s performance is so strong that, at times, you forget that you are watching a movie. Especially if you are a fan of true crime. It’s chilling stuff in much the same way as Exhibit A.

A few complaints

It would be remiss of me to not mention some of the parts of the movie that I didn’t enjoy. I felt like Be My Cat would have worked better with a much shorter length. For me, the movie starts to repeat itself with little progression towards the halfway point. The middle section is basically a redux of the first with the same applied logic to the character’s actions and the same intended result.

Adrian is a complex character and Tofei’s performance is fascinating. His monologues might leave some people feeling a slight sense of Deja vu, though. This is a trait of people with delusions and severe personality disorders so it is more of a feature than a flaw. I should also point out that some of the events that take place, despite the realism, are not particularly believable. Unless one were to assume that Romanian police are staggeringly incompetent, of course.

In the grand scheme of things, these are fairly minor complaints. It is impossible to understate just how fantastic Tofei’s performance is. He is believable throughout and it is one of those character portrayals that completely justifies the price of entry.

Our Scoring Philosophy: A Fair Fight

Horror is a genre that thrives thanks to indie film makers and low budget creators. At Knockout Horror, we firmly believe that every movie that we review deserves a fair fight. That's why we grade on a curve. Our star ratings are all about context, judging a film on what it achieves with the resources it has.

A 4-star rating for a scrappy indie horror made for $10,000 is a testament to its ingenuity and raw power. A 4-star rating for a $100 million blockbuster means it delivered on its epic promises. We don't compare them side-by-side; we celebrate success in every weight class, from the back-alley brawler to the heavyweight champion. Please keep this in mind when considering star ratings.

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