Every town I’ve ever lived in has had its fair share of ‘characters’ – the cranky old man who permanently wore a plastic toy police hat and shouted proprietorially at passers-by, the woman with the pram full of baby dolls who asked men on the street if he was their father, seemingly genuinely interested in their responses. Ofttimes, these people are surrounded by apocryphal, possibly scurrilous, rumours and speculation. Worlds, a found-footage feature written and directed by Chris Hammarberg, uses such a figure as the main plot device. The titular Worlds, nicknamed after the single word printed on the front of his white t-shirt, is spotted around town, swaying and mumbling as he stares at the sky, catching the attention of locals who become interested and record him on their phones whenever he’s sighted. The fun turns sinister when Worlds appears in one of the character’s home streets, seeming to get closer to their abode with every sighting, until one night he’s right outside the front door.

Worlds is framed as a documentary looking into the facts around this series of events, complete with behind the scenes footage of the documentary makers and interviews with the characters involved and the attending/investigating officers.

This opening section winds up well. There’s a genuine sense of approaching menace as we see Worlds’ further encroachment on home territory, and some interesting moral unease on the part of the main characters too; the people who share the video clips question what they’re doing. As a viewer, I wondered if I’d have recorded and shared footage of that police-hatted man had iPhones been around when I was younger, and I couldn’t say that the answer was no. Worlds himself, played by newcomer Nick Dailey, is charismatic, and shots of him striding through suburban streets quietly incanting are chilly and seem eerily close to real life.

Sadly, from here on in, the premise becomes less interesting. Possibly the filmmakers attempt to create more mystique than is necessary, imagining an open-ended feel would be more beneficial to a low-budget movie, but the plot’s gestures towards a grand conspiracy don’t work, feeling underdeveloped and vague. I didn’t want things wrapped up in a tiny perfectly packaged parcel, but I wanted something tighter than was offered. There’s an attempt to make more from less, which is an admirable ambition, but fails here. The second half of the film, which switches from plot building to attempted explanation, severely ramps down the tension, which had been accruing impressively for the opening runtime.

As a fan of artifice, I’m generally quite impressed and intrigued by the tricks and tics used in found-footage films to mimic documentary tropes, but instead of feeling like some genuine cursed documentary, Worlds manages to come across more as an attempt to imitate a found-footage film. Most of the acting is fine, but there’s none of that uncanniness engendered by some performances in the finest faux found-footage films; that little something that makes a viewer question whether they’re actually witnessing the genuine article, creating just enough of a teensy tiny space of doubt to let wonder flourish. And there seems to be an understanding that found footage = shaky cams, but as most of what we see in Worlds is purporting to be a documentary, albeit a low budget one, it doesn’t fully make sense that shots are perpetually unsettled and uneven.

This film could have been more successful by attempting less, but that sounds anti-ambition. There’s a good film somewhere beneath the surface of Worlds, maybe one less conspiratorial and more concrete, capitalising on the well-engineered suburban dread that haunts the opening section of the movie.