film

Found Footage: What Do You Think?

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Found footage films have become an explosive horror sub-genre, and despite the general “been there, done that” trend among critics and audiences alike, filmmakers continue pumping them out by the dozens. Somebody must be buying, right? What do you think of the format?

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At one point, the horror genre would’ve been pretty low on my list of favorite genres, maybe even the lowest. That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy the occasional scary movie; my dad really liked them we used to sit up and watch that thing on TNT or TBS with Joe Bob Briggs. This was the first time that I ever saw Tom Savini’s 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead (it would be several more years before I’d ever see the original (and I still prefer Savini’s)), and it was a film that stuck with me. I was old enough for it not to scare the hell out of me, but it was still a vivid memory.

Several years later I reassessed my thoughts on the horror genre and specifically got into zombie flicks, roughly 2 years before the craze the swept the horror world in the mid 2000’s.  From their I branched out into Frankenstein films because I figured he was kind of a zombie, and then I read the book, which was totally fantastic in its own way.  Frankenstein then led me through the Universal films of the 30’s and 40’s as well as Hammer’s efforts from the 50’s and 60’s.  The old Universal films got me interested in even older films from the silent era, while these early franchises then led me down the down the road of prolonged 80’s series like A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Halloween, Child’s Play, Hellraiser, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and similar multi-sequel series that created horror icons.  And still, that led me (somehow) into the nasty ultra-gore undergorund, some of which I’d already touched on during my stint with zombies, and pointed me in the sub-genre revolving around cannibals.  As I began to realize how vacant my knowledge of 70’s horror was, I began going through a rape-and-revenge phase.  From there it’s hard to say where I went.  Torture porn, maybe?  By this time movies (and series) like Saw, Hostel, Turistas, and others were in full swing.

Admittedly my collection slowed down a few years, for a number of reasons.  First of all, I’d pretty much run through most of my “to get” list.  Normally this would grow about twice as fast as my collection, but I also found myself in a position where I was able to watch less movies.  And since I watched less, that meant I wasn’t reading about and discussing them as often, which led me to fewer new movies.  Then I had to move, everything got packed up, and suddenly I didn’t have the room to wallow in 400+ movies.  To this day, the vast majority of my great horror collection remains boxed up in a storage locker.

But that doesn’t mean my love of horror is gone, it just means my material accretion is on hiatus.  Throughout watching all these movies, horror began to become one of my favorite genres.  This didn’t mean that I enjoyed movies outside of horror any less than I normally would’ve, it just meant that I had a new appreciation for horror and a certain context with which to judge them in.  What I find so remarkable about the genre is that is that whether a film is good or bad, big budget or low budget, it’s all horror.  Make sense?  Maybe not.  I guess what I mean is that there’s almost always something worth seeing, and there’s a very quality that horror has where it can work on any number of different levels.

But let’s try to get back to the point of this article – found footage.  Via Netflix and cable TV, I’m still able to catch copious amounts of horror.  Most of today’s films (let’s call “today” the last 4 or 5 years) fall into 2 groups.  Some are big to moderately budgeted films that rely mostly on so-called supernatural horror and touch on a very easily digestible form of horror.  The other is solely comprised of found footage.  All the low budget filmmakers are going to found footage these days.  And really, a lot of low budget horror is made by horror fans, so they know what they’re doing.  The problem is that all they want to do is cram it into the found footage format.  That doesn’t mean all found footage is created equally, because there’s quite a discernible range of quality within the sub-genre.

Here’s just a smattering of found footage films that I’m stumbled across within the two or three months: The Taking of Deborah Logan, Area 407, Amber Alert, Mr. Jones, Crowsnest, Alien Abduction, V/H/S, V/H/S/2, V/H/S: Viral, Devil’s Pass, The Den, The Last Exorcism, Grave Encounters, Grave Encounters 2, Apollo 18, The Ouija Experiment, Quarantine…and there’s probably more.  I’m not going to hunt down the years for all these, but I’m pretty sure none of them are older than 2010.  That’s 17 films, all “found footage,” either off the top of my head or a quick browse through what I’ve recently watched on Netflix and my history of IMDB entries I’ve visited.

Like I said, even within the category there are varying degrees of quality.  Some of these are absolutely terrible, while some of them are pretty good.  But even with the good ones, I tend to find myself thinking, “that was pretty good…for found footage.”  I’m still not sold on the style as a whole.  I do think it has some interesting advantages over conventional films, but not everyone knows how to use these advantages, and there are also a lot of disadvantages that many filmmakers can’t seem to overcome.

The Good Stuff

In general, found footage films are pretty damn good at creating tension, and they’re also much more effective at delivering jump scares than your typical film.  The whole idea behind found footage is to present a realistic scenario, and by sticking with the relatively mundane much of the time, the “crazy stuff” is admittedly effective.  These flicks end up leaving a lot to the imagination, which can really heighten the suspense, to an extent anyway.  My favorite thing about found footage is the creepy atmosphere than most of them are able to create.  The first Grave Encounters is one of the better examples, as is Devil’s Pass and Apollo 18 due to their settings.

The Bad

What I often have to ask myself is, “are the ‘bad parts’ worth sitting through for the good stuff?”  Nevermind the fact that I have to take Dramamine before almost all of them.  One of my two biggest complaints is that we generally have to wait until we’re at least half way or a third into the film before anything really starts happening.  This leaves me scouring every frame of film near the beginning looking for clues – sometimes they’re there, sometimes not, like the shadowy figure in Mr. Jones or the hikers in the distance in Devil’s Pass.  More often than not though, we’re treated to painfully boring events and conversations that really have no place being recorded in the first place.  I get it I get it, it’s supposed to add to the authenticity, but it’s been done to death already.

The other huge fault with the majority of found footage is their lack of an ending.  The majority of them simply stop about midway through the third act – Alien Abduction and Crowsnest are two of the biggest offenders that come to mind – which really demonstrates a lack of vision on the part of the filmmaker.  If the filmmaker had a complete vision in mind, then he/she wouldn’t feel the need to leave it open ended and leave those last few dots unconnected.

Other points that tend to fluctuate proportionate to quality are aspects like dialog and extended segments where the camera is out of focus, pointed at the ground, dropped, held while running, and anything else that precludes visibility while inducing motion sickness.  Many times there is little to no script involved, with the actors involved largely adlibbing the dialog.  At times, the speech does come off as naturalistic (if not a little boring) but when the monsters start crawling out from under the bed, shit falls apart.  Check out the incessant squealing of the girls in Area 407, the endless whining, crying, and fighting in Crowsnest, the fuck fuck fuck fuckity fuck fuckery in Grave Encounters 2, and so on.  I don’t know if a script would help or not, but these portions can be really tough to sit through and can ruin otherwise effective scenes.

The Ugly

Furthermore, there are a few conventions that found footage films slide into that I really don’t understand the reasoning behind.  I know that stressful situations can make people behave in strange ways, but so much found footage makes the human race out to be nothing but total idiots.  Characters quit thinking rationally, they start fighting with each other, they make the worst decisions possible…it’s like that survival instinct never kicks in.  History shows us that humans band together and get stronger when faced with adversity, they don’t crumple under the weight of it all and breakdown into sniveling, pathetic creatures.

We also usually have to have a reason why these events are being filmed.  Documentary is a popular explanation, as is the need to film these bizarre events simply because they are bizarre and the characters want to document what happens to them.  At what point do you put the damn camera down and start taking control?  One minute the characters are running towards the scary noises, the next they’re headed in the opposite direction.  In a way this ties in my previous point – a complete breakdown in logic – including the need/the attempt to capture it all on film essentially at all costs.

What….Happened…

The inherent flaw to any found footage film is that we’re almost never granted any internal logic or greater insight into what’s going on because we lack an omniscient perspective.  Omniscient perspectives are part of what make movies as a medium work.  We get to understand a great deal about what’s going on, we get to go beyond the limitations of our characters, the limitations of time.  The simple act of capturing events as they happen on film might seem brilliant, but it sucks all of the artistry out of filmmaking.  Nevermind techniques like editing, music, or lighting, which can convey all sorts of things in an efficient, artistic manner.  Nevermind all of the wonderful stuff made possible by film that is completely thrown out of the window with found footage.

With merely the camera’s perspective to rely on, the story only goes as far as the camera, and usually the person holding it.  Once the worst of the worst starts, that’s usually when the film ends because even the filmmakers can’t justify a POV perspective after events move so far along.  Ultimately it’s this lack of resolution and lack of understanding that leaves the film unsatisfying.  For example, in Alien Abduction, what the hell were the aliens trying to?  Abduction and experimentation seemed to be their goals, yet the alien beam is shown straight up killing at least 2 people.  Yet our few seconds on the ship suggest that people were being dissected and experimented upon.  And yet weirder is the father’s return to Earth a year later.  And then in Crowsnest, we’re left with a bunch of nonsense to try to make something out of: who was that mutant girl? What was she doing?  Why was some camper rolling around killing people?  What’s the deal with the old man with the warning?  And the disappearing girl?  What does the implication of a closed time loop in Devil’s Pass really mean?

Too Much is Left Unseen

Found footage: it would seem to suggest that everything, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is filmed, right?  Conversely, most of these films barely catch a glimpse of the big bad on tape.  It just doesn’t make sense.  Most of the time the characters keep filming precisely to capture whatever preternatural or supernatural occurrences are surrounding them, yet it seems like very little of it makes it on tape.  We barely see “the dinosaurs” in Area 407, aliens are noticeably scarce in Alien Abduction, and the freaky ghosts are hardly visible in The Ouija Experiment.

Now there are some exceptions, generally in those which I’d consider a notch about the rest.  Both Grave Encounters and its sequel give us a good deal to look at, and although not supernatural, The Den eventually provides us with a clear look at just what the hell is going on.

Worth Watching?

I doubt that anything will ever top The Blair Witch Project in terms of found footage.  It was the progenitor of the genre and will likely remain one of the best, if nothing else because of how fresh the approach was back in 1999.  Plenty of horror fans will also give a nod to the Paranormal Activity series; I don’t wholly dislike them, but I find them still well within the limits of the style and one of the more egregious offenders when it comes to too much “down time.”

But whether you like found footage or not, there are a few of these flicks that I think are worth checking out, especially if you’re already a horror fan.  Not a horror fan?  I can’t make any promises.  But if you are, check out a few of my favorites from the aforementioned films.  There’s no need to run out and buy it, but if you’re moderately desperate or need something to watch, give ’em a second thought:

• Grave Encounters and Grave Encounters 2 – I had a pretty good time with both of these films.  The first one is marginally better, and though the dialog borders on grating, it slowly and methodically builds a growing sense of dread and terror.  Unlike most films that start off which a bunch of ideas chugging MGD or some pretentious band of hipsters whining about normalcy, the first Grave Encounters gets off to a quick start.  The sequel is fun too, though it goes in a bit of a different direction.  The lead actor is kind of a drag and I think the film suffers for it, but otherwise the film takes a number of twists and turns and cleverly connects back to its predecessor.
• Quarantine – Another slow starter, though it’s fairly interesting when it picks up.  The ending sequence is the best (and, I think, inadvertently copied by many other found footage movie) and does a great job showing off the sub-genre’s more effective potential.
• The Last Exorcism – One of the most genuinely creepy found footage movies I’ve seen, with a decent measure of realism thrown in to give it added appeal.  There’s almost a modicum of naturally developing humanity and emotion as well, something we don’t often see in horror, and even less often do we see done well.
• The Den – I’m not sure that I can give this a flat out recommendation, but as far as found footage goes, it’s not that bad.  The beginning starts out with a great premise, and then the middle starts sinking fast, but the third act delivers a curve ball from out of nowhere that ends up being somewhat satisfying.  But once again, explanations are lacking.

It’s a Shame…

Every time I watch “found footage,” I have to wonder what today’s horror landscape would look like without them.  Although most of these films innately fall below the standard of non-found footage, there are several admittedly great ideas locked away in these little nuggets of mediocrity.  Does the lack of expense and talent involved with making found footage films help these ideas come to life?  Would we never even see this stuff otherwise?  Or does it merely provide a cheap and easy way for filmmakers to posit interesting questions without being forced to give the audience adequate answers?  Is found footage an acceptable and validated avenue for creativity to flourish or just an excuse to be lazy?

Devil’s Pass has a great premise, once it finally gets there anyway.  The teleportation experiments and time travel leanings are quite interesting.  And instead of being presented in overt sci-fi fashion, the focus is instead placed on the horrors of fusing individuals with inanimate objects via teleportation and unforeseen side effects of time travel.

Alien Abduction, despite the rather blasé title, is an entertaining look at one of NC’s own supernatural phenomena, the Brown Mountain Lights.  Although a closer look at just what the aliens were doing and why would’ve helped, the aggressiveness of the creatures and a few genuinely spooky scenes like the tunnel full of deserted cars and our protracted view of the spaceship’s interior.

Apollo 18 squandered its potential more than any film I’ve mentioned so far.  It’s like they actively tried to make this movie as boring as possible.

How Many More Will Be Found?

Love ’em hate ’em, most found footage flicks play out pretty much the same, and it’s high time someone either take the genre to new heights or move on to something else.  Personally I can’t decide whether or not we’re right in the thick of it or whether the genre is witnessing a decline.  With the popularity of Paranormal Activity every so slowly waning, maybe we’ll start to see fewer of these in the future.  It would be really interesting if someone came along and did something clever with the format, but I don’t really see that happening.

So what do you think of found footage?  Where do you think it’ll be in one year, or five years?  Does the average horror movie aficionado actually like this stuff, or are we simply facing a shortage of anything else?  As genres like action and drama move their best stories from film over to television, is film in general destined to become a second-class medium where low budget found footage is the best we can expect?

Let us know what you think of found footage in the comment below!

Written by The Cubist