The found footage genre in horror (and it’s almost exclusively used in horror, for reasons we’ll get into in a second) is divisive, to say the least. Some find the first-person POV perspective to be nausea-inducing, some find it to be a crutch that poor storytellers lean on, some think it’s the most gimmicky method of presenting horror to come along since the old “we bought you life insurance in case you die of fright while watching our film” promotion, while still others find that it brings horror out of the realm of cheesy slasher films and into a realm of heightened realism.I’m usually in the latter camp. I’ve never been the biggest horror aficionado; the Freddy Kruegers and Jason Voorhees of the world have always struck me as more ridiculous than thrilling. There’s something about the artifice of horror films that have always made me laugh at them, whether it’s the comically elaborate deaths, the abundance of cliche, or the emphasis on violence over atmosphere. That isn’t to say that they aren’t effective at times: I’m as susceptible to jump scares as the next guy, and films that heavily emphasizing spooky surroundings over shocking moments (think the creepy first half of Event Horizon, for one) can certainly make my skin crawl.
It wasn’t until found footage films started popping up that I really found my stride with horror films, though. As the Besties entry on The Blair Witch Project will indicate, I found that film to be a uniquely terrifying one when it arrived, and new found footage films have arrived with varying regularity over the last decade. Some people enjoy sports comedies, some buy every political drama that comes out: I find myself in the odd position of greatly enjoying a sub-genre of a genre I don’t particularly care for.
Found footage works because of the interesting ways in which the subgenre plays with notions of artifice and authenticity. In most films, breaking the fourth wall is taboo. Everyone in the audience knows that they’re watching a film that was scripted and acted and shot on camera, and that even the two beautiful actors kissing in a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean look alone, they were in fact just a few feet off the shore of Hawaii and buffeted by hundreds of crew members just on the other side of the camera. We push that knowledge to the back of our minds, though, for the sake of a suspension of disbelief without which filmgoing is effectively a joyless endeavour in appreciating a craft.
Found footage films, on the other hand, go to great lengths to ensure that you know at all times that you are watching a film. References to camera batteries and the amount of film the filmmakers have left and how the sound quality is are pervasive. The actual filmmakers, the people who have conceived of the fiction of the film and written the script, subsume themselves to the fake filmmaker, the cameraperson inside the film who records the supposed events that transpire, for the sake of making it easier for you to believe that those events actually transpired. Things can get meta: there is both "The Blair Witch Project," the collection of film that the families of the dead students watched and edited together, and there's also The Blair Witch Project, the film that Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick directed and released into theaters.
It’s a reversal of our normal engagement with a film: the act of showing the process of filmmaking, the nuts and bolts of recording with a camera, is intended to solidify our belief in occurances that might otherwise look ridiculously low-budget or cheesy in a more traditional filmmaking style. It’s another kind of appeal to authority, really: these events, no matter how unreal they might seem, were really recorded on film, and are thus more believable than the special effects and CGI of traditional films. We know, intellectually, that traditional horror films are recorded with cameras, but those films go to great lengths to pretend that they’re not; by showing you their cards right up front, found footage horror forces itself into a documentary attitude. Despite the many, many ways in which we’re told images can lie, there’s still a part of us, or at least of me, that believes in the ultimate authority of film, and perhaps that’s why found footage affects me as much as it does.
All of which is why found footage is so rare in non-horror/sci-fi genres. There are mockumentaries, which share similar themes, but for the most part, we don't need the framework of a false documentary to believe in the events of a drama, or a romance, or an action film. Their events are, if implausible, rarely impossible. With horror, though, the theoretical gains to realism that can be found by forcing an audience to take on a cameraman's point of view - a realism enforced by exposure to decades of media - can often mean the difference between a low-budget scare working or not working.
I’m not saying that found footage is the ultimate form of horror films, simply that I have a lot of affection for it that I don’t have for the usual serial-killer fare. Part of that might also be its relative scarcity. Found footage films, while often massively profitable given adequate marketing (thanks to being dirt-cheap to produce), only come along once or twice a year, which is fine by me. Any more than that and whatever makes them special would likely fade over time, until I’d likely be as tired of them as I am of other horror films.
I know there are plenty of you who aren’t as infatuated with found footage as I am, though; going back to read the comments on The Last Exorcism surprised me when I saw how many people hated it. Does it just not work for you? Do you need higher production values to suspend your disbelief? Or do the cheapness of the films involved and their low-budget effects put you off?
My problems with Last Exorcism aren't related to the found footage part of it. It was too slow, but the main problem I had was its advertising. It was not the movie that was sold to us. I also hated that random twist out of nowhere ending. After an hour and a half of being bored, that awful ending soured me on the movie.
My problem with many found footage movies is I need to feel there is a reason the camera operator doesn't just say, "Fuck it," and drop the camera. Last Exorcism covered this well (but, like I said, I had other problems with it). I also think Diary of the Dead covered this well and I really enjoyed that movie. I am a bit of a Romero fanbot, I should admit.
One movie I think that failed at giving a good reason for the camera operator to keep shooting was Cloverfield. I think that movie was horribley overrated.
I found it to be a very cool and interesting way to do it the first few times around. But when everyone started to do it I kinda lost interest... Not that Blair Witch was a good movie, but it was very original, you have to give it that. Come to think of it, was any of these movies that very good? I think Cloverfield is my favorite though, it kinda took it as far as it could go. Or parhaps the first Paranormal Activity... I always found that movie to be very smart, but I seem to be the only one with that opinion
Cheap Trick?
I thoroughly enjoyed Quarantine in the theaters. It started off very hokey and the audience was loud and dismissive. They seemed to think it was just going to be a cheesy horror movie but when the shit hit the fan they all went silent. I love it when that happens, to see first-hand a horror movie command an entire audience's attention with such an abrupt mood change.
These movies are just fun, very few are really good when you sit back and look at them but for the duration of the film I definitely enjoy myself and that's what I care about most.
I too am a big fan of the found footage genre with oddly only the Blair Witch Project being the one I find a little grating as the events weren't scripted enough and too often the actors relied on merely screaming at each other for great lengths of time. But despite being a huge fan of directors and cinematographers injecting a large amount of aesthetic beauty -- haunting or otherwise -- into their horror films such as say Jacques Tourneur has on several occasions, like yourself I feel the found footage strips away the artifice that we are used to and makes the horror that much more immediate. I'm also puzzled by the negative reaction towards The Last Exorcism as I felt that the somewhat fallen priest Cotton Marcus was a great character and really carried the film very well all the way up the sudden and quite literal bat out of hell ending. But y'know...different strokes and all that although really I feel that most of the hate is merely a knee-jerk reaction against their sudden and immense popularity.
I love found footage a lot. I'm almost in the exact same boat for the horror genre (at least things that go for violence over atmosphere - The Shining is easily my favorite horror movie). Troll Hunter is one of my favorite flicks this year.
I agree that the found footage gives a sense of immediacy which heightens tension and as such I really enjoyed Cloverfield and the Troll Hunter. I don't really like being scared though so I haven't enjoyed/avoided found footage horror fare.
I really didn't like the Last Exorcism because they edited in music. It moved back and forth between "found footage" and "fake documentary" too much.
I do love the Paranormal Activity movies, but I don't know how much of that relates to found footage as a sub-genre. I thought Insidious was great and it was kind of similar to the PA's in some parts. I don't think there's that much of a difference in suspension of disbelief for me personally, but I LOVE touches like no end credits.
I like found footage in the horror genre. In most others they get a little too shaky.
I'm not really a huge fan of found footage, but I guess I can tolerate it.
Found footage films are normally the only kind of horror films i really like, bar The Blair Witch Project which i hated with a passion.
The first one i really really enjoyed was 'The Last Broadcast' which was a far superior film to TBWP and released around the same time, fantastic atmosphere and the 'found footage' cheapness of it made it work so much better, and the ending, while it seems a bit silly now, i really found to be quite shocking (for me) first time i watched it.
Paranormal Activity was one i got forced into watching and i didn't fancy watching it at all, but i was gripped after 30mins or so, the sequel was just as good and im looking forward to seeing the third one on Thursday. :)
@fifichiapet said:
I was about to say the same thing.
The biggest hurdle for these movies is that question: Why are you filming right now? Even though, in this genre, that camera is meant to exist, drawing attention to the fact that it is a prop in a movie still counts as breaking the fourth wall. This is exactly what happens when there is no good answer as to why the camera is rolling, and also how the camera is positioned.
I liked the way Blair Witch handled it. Pretty believable all the way.
I love found footage films. At least they provide something different for a change. I get really tired of the the same old formula over and over and over again with standard filmaking, that found footage usually feels fresh and new.
As a video editor, I find found footage films a nice break from the horror norm. In PA2, basically the same 6+ static shots are shown over and over (with little breaks in between), and I found myself leaning towards the screen as small things turned into larger badness. A very interesting way to design a film and draw the audience in, far far removed from the distance that split second Transformers-like cutting produces for me these days.
And a perfect time in film history to experiment with it, with people so ripe on reality shows and open to this technique. (Personally, after Blair Witch introduced the concept to me, I NEVER really cared 'why does the camera person keep rolling'...just as I never really question why people in normal movies don't notice a BIG EFFING CAMERA IN THEIR FACE when they're in bed, in a car, shrunk down inside a human body, etc. It's just part of the conceit you'd give to any film that you are watching.).
But the form is very limited in longevity, I'm betting. I find it similar to the backwards-narrative trick used in Memento. I LOVED that film, and had it caught on (and been so inherently cheap to make like found-footage films are), I bet we'd see a couple of films a year told the same way...but it would surely run its course and from then on be considered a fad of the times.
I fully expect that "Hot Tub Time Machine-2038" will have drunk guys going back to the 2010's and the rest of that movie is shot in found-footage style. And the audience will chuckle knowingly at the nostalgia of it.
I like found footage films mostly because I like horror films in general. I think it's just a really interesting way to position a movie. I liked Troll Hunter a ton and I'm a fan of The Blair Witch Project and even Cloverfield. I'm not as crazy about Cloverfield as, I guess, everyone else is, but I also love giant monster movies so I feel like it was right up my alley. I liked The Last Exorcism but I can't remember them putting music in it. I feel like if I remembered that I wouldn't like it as much because that was one of the things that turned me off of Diary of the Dead, another thing was the terrible actors. I'm on the fence about the ending of The Last Exorcism. On one hand I wish it ended without them going into the woods to see what was going down and that there really wasn't anything supernatural happening, but on the other hand after watching that movie for an hour and a half I wanted it to be supernatural.
It seems like a more unknown found footage movie but The Poughkeepsie Tapes is a really messed up found footage movie that is pretty creepy.
It just occurred to my why I like found footage horror films: I'm a huge fan of HP Lovecraft and a large number of his stories are essentially the same thing, being made up of found notes and journals.
I think Cloverfield did an effective job of using found-footage because part of the idea was for you to relate to the characters and realize that these people are just like you and a similar situation could happen to yourself.
I think more often than not, people use Found-footage because its low budget, not because of a stylistic choice. Cloverfield had an enormous budget but they chose to stick with found-footage. It added a lot to the film, actually it probably defined it entirely. If it was just shot like 2012 but followed the same people around NYC, the movie probably would not have been as interesting.