After stumbling upon a terribly photoshopped family portrait in a movie, this man started hunting for them in other films
Since he shared his collection, others have followed with their unique finds
It takes one click of a button to find yourself being swallowed by poorly photoshopped film posters. But it takes an entirety of a film — and honest to god dedication — to unearth a single awfully airbrushed family photo. People in nature are curious creatures, so it only makes sense that getting a taste of something as raw and genuine as a badly staged family portrait will only lead to hunger for more. To borrow a catchphrase from Pokémon: 'Gotta catch 'em all!'
To find out how this curious project started, Bored Panda has reached out to Justin Gerber, the author of the titular Twitter thread that inspired hundreds of cinephiles across the world to join Justin's project.
"The pandemic had just begun and, like most of my friends, I was spending the vast majority of my time at home during weeknights and weekends. What better way to fill the time than putting on an insane number of movies that I otherwise would have never watched?" Gerber said, explaining the origins of how it all started.
Although Justin doesn't remember his first truly bad 'family photo' he ever saw on a silver screen, he remembers it was Deon Taylor's home invasion thriller The Intruder (33% on Rotten Tomatoes) that kickstarted the whole thing. "A bit into the movie, there is a close-up of an old family photo that was so badly photoshopped, I paused it, took a picture, and sent it to some friends. We all laughed, and a bit was born."
You could have guessed that Justin is a self-confessed film buff right to the bone. Not just your garden variety film fan who obsessively watches movies but someone who devours them whole and is always hungry for more (which explains the jaw-dropping total film count on Justin's Letterboxd account).
It's only apt that a cinephile like Justin would work as a co-host on two horror-themed podcasts (one dedicated to Stephen King and the other to The Evil Dead franchise), as part of the Bloody Disgusting channel.
"While I love other pop culture (books, TV, music, sports), movies reign above them all like hog fire," Gerber said. "Within movies, I love the horror genre, and always look forward to discussing those movies in the podcasts I'm part of."
Following the reactions of film characters is part of the movie-watching charm. We human beings react to the on-screen reactions the same way as we do outside the movie screen. Having said that, we're always interested to learn the initial reaction of people who, accidentally or not, manage to spark a viral reaction.
In Justin's case, people's responses exceeded his expectations. "I expected a little bit of a reaction, because a lot of my followers and I share similar interests," he told us. "However, I was not expecting it to blow up so fast, and was happy to see other people’s posts within the thread receive a lot of notices, as well." Currently, the viral Twitter thread has been shared more than 2,000 times and liked by almost 27,000 people.
Continuing the conversation about poorly photoshopped family photos in films, Justin opens up about his favorites. "It has to be the one from Saw II. Donnie Wahlberg’s detective character and his son are outside Madison Square Garden. Lighting doesn’t sync up, people are together in the same shot who weren’t really together at the time, and [of course there's] a phony backdrop," Gerber pointed out. "It has everything I want in a bad photoshop."
Justin also explains that all of his findings were done naturally — no rewatching or seeking it out using the help of the net. "All of my pics were taken in the moment of discovery or re-discovery. I didn’t seek anything out, which made it a lot more fun and a lot more random," he said. "That’s how you see pics from something like Family of Cops, a latter-day Charles Bronson made-for-Canadian-TV movie."
