i love found footage horror with my whole chest

 

in 2015, i vividly remember going to see unfriended at midnight when it came out. i had just gotten off a very late shift at [redacted], so I drove furiously down the street to the theater, slammed my credit card down on the AMC ticket counter, and huffed and puffed my way into my seat. (middle row, dead-center, period). i remember sweating profusely as i unwrapped my scarf and threw my coat into the seat next to me and propped my feet up. unbeknownst to me, before i almost committed vehicular manslaughter to get there on time, there were possibly only 5 other people seeing the film. the aforementioned huffing and puffing occurred because i thought that i was seeing a masterpiece and wanted to get there early to get a good seat. even though i frequently went found myself in catastrophically empty theaters to see b-movie horror classics like cabin in the woods, you're next, the possession, and shark night, i really thought that unfriended was going to be different. 

 

why? because it was found footage.

now i love found footage horror. i will continue to love found footage horror for the rest of my life because trust me, its evolving. it will come back and i am not talking about with some unfriended sequel....(unless?) however, i saw a video where someone mentioned that found footage horror in the 2000-2010s had the impact that slashers did in the 80-90s and i think this is an impeccable point to be made.

 

when you think about the 80s and 90s horror, most of the films that come to mind are probably slashers. sleepaway camp, the burning, prom night, house on sorority row, april fool's day, happy birthday to me, scream, i know what you did last summer. these were all very popular movies of the time and even though they all kind of bleed into one another (hahaha, get it?), the genre kept them coming out in different shapes and forms almost to an excess. seriously, most slashers of that time generally have the same murderous-revenge plot and the same paper-thin characters, but there's something about sticking to a formula that the anal retentiveness in me has to appreciate. there's also something in the "yes queen, give me nothing" energy that these films give off by literally doing the same thing with a different setting that i also just HAVE to appreciate. and that was all fine and dandy until the early 2000s-to-mid-2010s when we got a taste of different kind of horror: found footage horror.

 

i know that when you began this post, your mind probably went to the blair witch project rather than unfriended. now i can sit and talk to you about how prolific of a film the blair witch project was (because it was), but i won't. i will, however, tell you why they work. as a known mumblecore fanatic, my fascination with the found footage genre doesn't just stem from its shaky camera aesthetics and naturalistic dialogue, it stems from the fact that anyone can do it. now, i won't say that anyone can make a "good" found footage film, but pretty much anyone can pick up their phone and make a movie like this. there's something so wonderfully, unnerving about a film where you don't know where the evil is coming from and you don't know who's doing what because its all coming from the perspective of a crappy camera, phone, tablet or computer screen and so, we're just as limited with our scope as the characters in the film are.

 

the reason these films work is because there is this sort of forced intimacy and voyeuristic appeal that found footage films have because we, as the audience, such this limited perspective and in order to figure out what's going on, we have to find it for ourselves. we're constantly looking for clues alongside the characters. we're constantly on-edge because there's not really a linear or coherent story to be told and its our job to sort of piece together what's been left by these people, which in turn, makes us empathize with them. unfriended is filmed entirely from a laptop, so my nosy ass was snooping all around her desktop as much as i could between takes to learn more about the main character. i was looking at her spotify, her emails, and notifications just as much as i was watching the actual action of the film because that's how you have watch a found footage film. it's essentially learning through investigation and that is innovative.

 

moreover, i think i personally am also really a sucker for these films because as a kid because they really had me wondering if they were, in fact, "based on a true story." now, i will, again, admit i am a bit of a sucker overall. i believe most people when they tell me things. a friend of mine told me they saw 2015's the walk, a dramatized version of the man who walked between the twin towers on a tight rope, and told me the film ended with him starting his walk and the film fading to black and cueing up a title card that read: september 11, 2001.

 

AND I BELIEVED THEM.

 

WITH MY WHOLE CHEST.

 

so, of course, when 15 year-old me sees a film like paranormal activity and it says it is "based off a true story", i'm going to believe it. however, like with the slew of slashers in the 80s-and-90s, once blair witch hit if off in 1999 and paranormal activity blew up in 2007, it was only normal that these kinds of found footage horror beats hit the scene. and i'm not just talking about the paranormal activity sequels either. i'm talking about unfriended, cloverfield, the sacrament, creep, grave encounters, devil's due, the gallows, silent house, the devil inside, the last exorcism- type films. and if we're going even further, we can also talk about films like (while not exactly supernatural in nature, but are still prevalent of the time) V/H/S and the den. and while i don't think these films are the best things ever made, i think they do tap into something quite unique that was really ahead of its time when they came out.

when the blair witch project was released, society was just getting used to the internet and with the rise of the internet, came the rise of obscure snuff films and home-movies that people were uploading onto the internet. and with that came this fear that not only could these people gain access to your online presence and thus, your irl presence, as a result, but that the whole world could with the click of a button. the blair witch project marketed itself on that fear and executed it with the technique rooted in reality (found footage) and its what these other films are trying to emulate and some of which, do quite well.  

 

V/H/S does this by way of actual home-movies that prey on the sort of fear one got from watching the slenderman marbles hornet tapes that were also quite popular at the time. the den does this by way of exploring our fear of the unknown on the world wide web, or, moreover, the dark web and who's lurking on there. i guess, i will also bring up megan is missing, which is gaining momentum right now on the internet for some strange reason, which also served as a sort of scary warning against talking to strangers online. i saw that film in 2011 and was barely a teenager, and it scared me  because i very much so frequented random chat rooms and was known as the one and only girl who would show their face on omegle at slumber parties.

like i said, these films were ahead of their time. and i think it would be a waste to not  mention how found footage filmmaking has extended itself towards other films like chronicle,end of watch, searching and project x, three films that i find revolutionary in terms of filmmaking because they took this concept (i refuse to call it a gimmick) and sort of flipped it on its head and did something different and just, cool. one of the strong suits of found footage filmmaking is how adaptable it is. a lot of people will say that is due to its profitability, which is probably true. these films are dirt cheap to make and churn out, but that does not lessen their quality.

 

honestly, i am ready for a found footage rom-com (one of which, i may have to make myself).