Has the "Found Footage" Genre gone too far?

[ArcticFox]

I love "found footage" movies. I love them. For me, Paranormal Activity was the scariest freaking movie ever. I've seen a few good ones, a few bad ones, and I think I'm starting to see a pattern in where found footage movies go wrong.

1: Camera surgically attached to the protagonist.

The thing that made Paranormal Activity work was that the camera was plausible and believable where it was. It was set up on a tripod in the bedroom to record weird happenings. Cloverfield was pretty good but at some point I found myself asking "Why is this guy still hauling the camera around?" At some point the idea of the person in this unimaginably scary situation still has the presence of mind to hang on to the camera, keep it pointed at scary things, and not manage to drop, break, discard or deactivate it at any point.

Up until last night, the worst offender in this was Paranormal Entity (A ripoff of the title of Paranormal Activity)... Everywhere this guy goes and everything he does he's got that camera.

"I'm documenting all this."

But I have a new champion. Apollo 18. That's right, folks. A found footage movie that takes place on the Moon. Still there seemed to be more cameras in and around the lander than any other single type of equipment. Area 407 did this too. The girl with the camera is running from a man with a gun, but that camera just keeps right on rollin'.

Grave Encounters, while an excellent movie, did this as well. That camera must have had an AWESOME battery...

2: BWAAAAAA LOOK HOW SCARY IT IS!!!!!

This movie was also guilty of the second thing that kills good found footage movies. The "LOOK HOW SCARY IT IS!" syndrome. It's where a movie builds up some pretty good tension and uncertainty with little hints and flashes of something bad happening, and then rams it all in your face all of a sudden, almost like they're trying to convince you that yes, all that little stuff means the really big, bad scary thing is well... really big, bad and scary... instead of letting your imagination handle it.

It's why Paranormal Activity and The Blair Witch Project worked. You never actually see the scary Big Bad. Your imagination goes nuts trying to fill that blank in, and whatever you're imagining is always going to be scarier than what the director comes up with. Cloverfield is an exception in that it sort of did that by obscuring the monster for most of the movie, and by the time you actually see it clearly it really is kinda scary because it met the expectations the movie built up to.

Apollo 18... well... fell on its nose. It hints at something scary on the Moon there... gives clues, but kind of threw up on itself at the end by taking the scary creatures only glimpsed before, and fills the screen with them. "HA! If you thought seeing a glimpse of one was scary... look! They're everywhere! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" (Well, th eones you could see through the violently shaking camera and the contrived interference.) And I went "Yawn. Not scary now that I know what they are." The director missed the fact that it's the imagination, not the SFX, that scares the audience.

It's why CGI hasn't really made scary movies in general any scarier.

3: Camera Shake means stuff just got real

Maybe this is an attempt at realism... to lampshade the improbable scenario in which the cameraman has somehow held onto the camera rather than dump it to get a little extra speed when fleeing from the monster/alien/ghost/whatever. The camera is violently shaken, you can't see a thing, you wish your screen was smaller because you're about to vomit, and none of it is particularly scary. Paranormal Activity 2 had what was probably supposed to be a pretty scary scene in the basement where someone goes down there trying to find out who's screaming (toting the camera, of course.) and in the darkness some sort of physical confrontation takes place. No idea what happens, because the camera flips around like a Mexican jumping bean, but at least it eventually lands on the floor where we can listen to all the screaming, crying, noise, etc. I guess that's supposed to convince us something awful is going on.

The Blair Witch Project did this too at the end when Heather is running into the shack, screaming. We have no idea what else is going on, and eventually she drops the camera. At least we could tell she was running into the building though.

Apollo 18 took this to a new level by having electronic interference whenever the creatures were near... which completely obscured the camera's view... so literally a significant portion of the movie was nothing but snow and electronic noise. How's that scary? What am I supposed to think about the monsters? They have EMP equipment? Radio jammers?

And then there's the last major category of issues these movies have:

4: How to we stop this thing?

The ending. It's like the writers had lots of good, scary ideas for how to get going, and have a decent midgame, but then can't seem to bring the film to an ending that satisfies. Sometimes they handle it by just.... stopping. Kinda like the ending to Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Sometimes the Big Bad quits messing around and just finishes off the characters. Sometimes the ending idea is ok but the story kinda jumps to it, like there was no elegant way to get there smoothly.



I love these movies, but maybe it's partly because I have to sift through a lot of junk to find the gold nuggets, and those make it all worth it. Has the genre gone stale? Have we been inundated with these movies because they tend to be cheap to make? Part of me is very eager to watch Chernobyl Diaries but... will it suffer from the problems listed?

[TripExistence]

I read all of it, very interesting. Horror movies aren't really my thing, but I was wondering as to what your thoughts were on Chronicle.

[Orodrist]

I haven't watched a ton of them, since they're usually not my kind of horror, but the only one I liked was REC. No. I didn't like Blair Witch.

I may watch Chernobyl Diaries, though, now that you pointed it out, but that's more because of my STALKER fanhood.

[ArcticFox]

I read all of it, very interesting. Horror movies aren't really my thing, but I was wondering as to what your thoughts were on Chronicle.

Haven't seen it. Any good?

[CountKrazy]

I agree pretty much entirely with this. I enjoy the style immensely, but frankly, it seems rather limited and short-lived in its freshness. I don't honestly know how much longer it can go on.

With that said, I think it's hard to disagree that Chronicle is the absolute pinnacle of found footage. I think it always will be. When will we ever again have a story in which the camera can reasonably float and move around outside of the character's hands? Their powers broaden the horizons of the style, and unlike most films of this kind, you can actually understand why the character would keep a camera with him all the time. It was just a perfect incarnation of found footage and I cannot praise it enough.

[ScotchRobbins]

Found footage was a great concept.

The concept of "this video recording could not be delivered to a source because somebody either doesn't want you to know about it, or they were too gravely disabled to get it too you" is scary as it is.

To be frank, I think it's beginning to deflate. I've not been big on horror, but I've peeked at the reviews for a handful of found-footage movies and what the critics had to say overall.

Paranormal Activity - Bloodcurdlingly terrifying and well polished.

Cloverfield - Nice modern take on the Godzilla concept, but rough around the edges.

Apollo 18 - poorly developed, poorly executed, and it's greatest offense, not scary, hence defeating it's purpose for existing.

The pattern? Things are going downhill. I think this is happening to first person shooters too.

[TripExistence]

I read all of it, very interesting. Horror movies aren't really my thing, but I was wondering as to what your thoughts were on Chronicle.

Haven't seen it. Any good?

I really enjoyed it, but then again, I haven't been as over-exposed to the genre as you have. I thought it did a great job of mixing the first-person footage with shots that weren't as shaky... it seemed to come at the right moments, and the whole movie ending up feeling a lot more intense than it would have had it been in a standard perspective. There were moments when it seemed a little too gimmicky, but overall I was very pleasantly surprised.

[ChickenSoup]

I agree pretty much entirely with this. I enjoy the style immensely, but frankly, it seems rather limited and short-lived in its freshness. I don't honestly know how much longer it can go on.

With that said, I think it's hard to disagree that Chronicle is the absolute pinnacle of found footage. I think it always will be. When will we ever again have a story in which the camera can reasonably float and move around outside of the character's hands? Their powers broaden the horizons of the style, and unlike most films of this kind, you can actually understand why the character would keep a camera with him all the time. It was just a perfect incarnation of found footage and I cannot praise it enough.

DIS

[ArcticFox]

Well I'm bummed... Chernobyl Diaries wasn't a found footage movie...