New Trailer: The River

A new found footage TV show?? With involvement from the great OREN PELI? And the venerable Steven Spielberg?? You can damn well bet that Found Footage Aficionado is excited!



According to the reputable Uncle Creepy over at Dread Central, the respective masterminds of Paranormal Activity 1 and 2 (Oren Peli and Micheal Perry), drafted the series together, which indicates it has a high possibility of being extremely fucking awesome.

The premise is a bit close to Cannibal Holocaust for my comfort, but I suspect there will be no unconscionable human atrocities (or cannibals) in this TV show. (Can you imagine a basic US network station showing Cannibal Holocaust? I think the Earth would implode). As entirely unlikely and preposterous as it would be, I'm crossing my fingers that our protagonists will run into Mokele M'bembe on their trip!

Eyes in the Dark (2010)

Eyes in the Dark

Rating: 1 star out of 5.


Notice: This entry contains no spoilers.

Overview: Fun, spooky, and well executed. But definitely not for anyone awaiting a serious masterpiece, it's just a fun film with plastic monsters.

Under the umbrella of paranormal occurrences, there are three main categories. Ghost activity and alien encounters each incur a variety of found footage adaptations. Cryptozoology, by and large, does not (40-some 20 minute incarnations in Lost Tapes aside). And while Eyes in the Dark is far from the perfect found footage cryptid masterpiece I hope to someday find (what Paranormal Activity is to the ghost persuasion), it's refreshing to see a take on this subject.

A group of college kids go out into a remote woodsy area to party, it's the set-up you've seen a million times. But who doesn't love scantily clad young people running for their lives? And you've probably seen it mostly in slasher and monster movies, although it occasionally has a presence in found footage as well (Evil Things springs to mind).

Nothing about the plot is original, but the execution may be. The ole' ancient unearthed moster slash & dash rampage is only occasionally committed to found footage. I love a good monster flick and this one is done somewhat well. The obligatory meandering early segments are fun to watch, and the monster scenes are attacked with gusto by the filmmakers. Some aspects might seem cheesy to most, but it actually freaked me out quite a bit.

Like Strawberry Estates, they attempt to accomplish some scenes they simply can't manage on their budget, instead of opting for modesty like Wicksboro Incident. Don't get me wrong, I adore cheesy effects. In absolute seriousness, I'll take a decent rubber suit over most CGI -- Carnosaur's rubber dinos look more menacing than anything Spielberg has at his disposal. But even I have my limits. When you can't afford even the rubber suit, and you have to settle for a plastic novelty on a stick, that's when it's time to employ the 'less is more' approach to filmmaking. Keeping the monsters off-screen for the whole movie would have turned this goofy movie into a scary one.

It's a genuine shame that so many low-budget filmmakers fail to grasp elementary subtlety. Because you really, truly can make a five star, A+ found footage film without even a Paranormal Activity sized budget. But it takes a careful eye and a devout adherence to nuance. Hopefully as films like Paranormal Activity continue to garner millions of dollars, under the radar filmmakers will take a closer look at how much you can do when you leave the action to our imagination and keep things as simple as possible.

In the end, there's a reason Paranormal Activity and The Blair Witch Project give people nightmares, while Eyes in the Dark and Strawberry Estates flitter in obscurity. There's more to found footage than a shaky camera and meandering improvised dialogue. But I'm not sure Eyes in the Dark was ever intended to be a masterpiece. It succeeds considerably at being what it is: a fun, spooky movie about some kids on the edge of the woods. The found footage aspects lends decent scares to where there otherwise would have been none, and it admirably translates the found footage archetype into the 'just for fun thrasher' subcategory.

Lost Tapes, Season 2

Lost Tapes (Season 2)

In an era where paranormal shows have been swept up into the reality show tradition, leave it to Animal Planet -- of all channels, right? -- to put together something that's stylized, unapologetically scripted, beautifully reminiscent of the para docs I grew up with, and actually pretty creepy. Lost Tapes ran for three seasons in 2009 & 2010. Rumors of a fourth season have yet to be corroborated, but Animal Planet still currently airs reruns in the dead of the night.

Each episode of Lost Tapes features expository interviews about the legend and the possible existence surrounding a particular cryptid, coupled with found footage content depicting a group of people running afoul of said cryptid who invariably has every intention of slaughtering them. The plot diagram is never particularly original but the settings, characters, and set-ups are wonderfully varied and should keep your interest well enough.

A mix of faux-documentary and found footage, more so than The Blair Witch Project or Cloverfield or any of those films, this TV series is descended from what is perhaps the first found footage TV spot -- Alien Abduction: Incident In Lake County. UPN's original broadcast version played out very much like a 45 minute version of Lost Tapes, featuring action clips interspersed with fabricated expert interviews.

A paranormal found footage TV show is a strange beast. To do a truly great found footage TV show would be an incredible thing, but it would be unspeakably difficult to accomplish. Lost Tapes' 20 minute runtime (minus commercials) categorically lacks the timeframe necessary to capture the build-up and nuance that is the quintessential hallmark of most found footage, particularly of the paranormal variety. And the commercials intentionally cut into all of the suspenseful moments, which massacres the atmosphere. Moreover, part of what makes found footage so enticing and effective is the inherent concept that the footage is of a unique and novel nature -- a once in a lifetime event uncannily rendered on tape for the first and only time. It's part of the mystique, part of the believability. So it's difficult to return to that setting in every single episode and maintain much intrigue.

But that's beside the point, in light of how much fun this show is. I'd choose it over most paranormal shows today just for the spooky documentary aspects. There are some really nice episodes here. The creepy vampire in the crawlspace was preemptively reminiscent of Paranormal Activity 3, and the birthday 'girls weekend out' trip interrupted by the ground-dwelling lake monster was wonderfully frightful.

It's not something that'll ever live up to Paranormal Activity, Blair Witch, [Rec], etc. Just a fun little show. But for a found footage junkie like me? It's an absolutely fun-raking commentary on just how pervasive Found Footage has become today. Here we have 34 (full series) 20 minute short films in the found footage genre, predominantly of the cryptid variety, how can I not adore it? Each one is like a little piece of found footage culture. You see all the classic staples of the genre... the lost documentary crew, the urban legend turned deadly, the military shootouts in a claustrophobic locale. I feel like there's an incredible drinking game somewhere in this show that I haven't figured out yet. Bottom line is, if you like cryptids and found footage, you'd be silly not to catch this show.

[REC] (2007)

[REC]

Rating: Five stars out of five.

Note: No substantial spoilers beyond expository information you may read on the back of the case or see in a trailer.

Overview: Claustrophobic, terrifying, and with a decent amount of action, this is immaculate proof that found footage needn't always rely on subtle build-up and people walking around doing nothing. It'll be a ten decades before there's a more superbly-crafted zombie film in the found footage genre.

I have absolutely no complaints about this film. [Rec] is quite possibly the perfect hybrid of found footage and zombie. I can honestly say I think it will be many moons before anyone creates a found footage zombie movie that is better than [Rec].

[Rec]'s story begins with the crew of a late-night television news program called "While You're Asleep." Tonight they are at a Fire Station in order to record the nighttime duties of firefighters. But when they get a routine call to rescue an old lady who apparently had a serious fall in an apartment building, things take a turn for the grim as the whole building is forcibly quarantined and an outbreak occurs of a disease turning residents into flesh-eating zombie-like monsters.

[Rec] handles its simple premise with absolute mastery, crafting truly terrifying creatures, pulse-pumping action, and believable interactions between our faux-verite characters. One of the most difficult questions a found footage film must attempt to answer, is why our protagonist continues to film even as the scenario escalates into pandemonium and death. [Rec] provides perhaps one of the best answers to this question. As journalists, the crew of "While You're Asleep" at first is bound to consider this an opportunity for some award winning on location journalism. As the situation escalates and it no longer is clear whether they will make it out alive, the tape becomes assurance that what has happened to them (arguably with the government having been implicit in it), will not be overlooked.

In the same sense that Cloverfield could have been an incredible reboot to the American Godzilla, I can only imagine how happy Resident Evil fans would have been to receive [Rec] as the iconic game's film incarnation. [Rec] may represent the closest palatable film experience to that of playing a good Resident Evil game.... the much-noted claustrophobic atmosphere and the restricted locale of the dusty apartment complex is gorgeously reminiscent of the original Resident Evil's haunted mansion setting.

The many treks through blackened hallways dreading what horrible thing will jump out at you next continues the Resident Evil feel (in addition to being exceedingly creepy), but perhaps the best allusion to the Resident Evil format is the way information is disseminated. In a regular film, we tend to have a decent overview of the situation, whereas in [Rec] you find clues bit by bit while searching through the wreckage and encountering curious characters. It's a chillingly exciting film experience, and one I enjoy going back to again and again. It increases the feeling of realism and urgency in the film probably as much as the found footage style in the first place.

A Spanish film, [Rec] was remade for the United States into Quarantine, which itself had a sequel unrelated to [Rec] where an outbreak occurs on a plane. Quarantine 2: Terminal is well-regarded, although I don't believe it's found footage. [Rec] also has a sequel and two further sequels upcoming..

Paranormal Entity (2009)

Paranormal Entity

Rating: 2 stars out of 5.

Notice: No spoilers until noted.


Here we have one of Paranormal Activity's various mockbusters, films produced specifically to capitalize on a major picture's popularity. Generally their production values are low and their scripts are crumby, but I found this one at a used CD store and it looked so creepy, I just had to see it!

I can't say it was as good as I hoped, but it also wasn't as bad as I feared. The plot is fairly weak and it gleams most of its scares from Paranormal Activity (accomplished much less effectively here, of course). But it does get genuinely scary at a part or two, setting it leagues above other cash-in attempts such as Strawberry Estates (believed to have been an attempt at capitalizing on The Blair Witch Project).

If you're an absolute Paranormal Activity junkie, I could recommend this film after you've gone through the best found footage films. But before you go for Paranormal Entity, you may want to check out Lake Mungo. It's not as scary as Paranormal Entity -- it's more spooky and atmospheric than scary -- but it's a better film.

(SPOILER WARNING)

The early spooks were ineffective because they didn't show any scenes or lengths of time that didn't culminate in a ghostly occurrence. It would say "Night 1" and show something happening, "Night 2" and something small would happen, etc.

But as the film carries on, the scenes actually get more subtle and it becomes a occasionally scary. Maybe they were trying for the classic found footage build-up from mundane to terrifying, although that's a little more effective when you don't immediately start out with paranormal occurrences, instead starting out skeptical and then allowing terror to dawn on the audience. But the two scenes of the brother home alone, walking around the house in the dark, going from room to room.... is very creepy and much appreciated.

The movie does tend to drag after that, though. The point where they get so scared as to flee the house happens about half-way through, which should have set off the climax, but instead we're treated to half a movie of diminishing returns.

Naturally it doesn't expand much past what Paranormal Activity forged. However, the initial premise of the demon's interest being incurred first by the mother trying to write to her deceased husband, and instead end up corresponding with a demon, is pretty interesting and creepy. And *ehem* it may be a better premise than certain turns the Paranormal Activity series may or may not have recently taken.

Overall Paranormal Entity shows just how much craftsmanship is really in the original Paranormal Activity, crafting the plot and the scares so much more effectively than does this film. But Paranormal Entity has some good scares of it's own and it's a fun film to watch if you're an absolute found footage junkie like myself.

Origins of Found Footage: Timeline

In the late-00s, a variety of successful found footage films began receiving mainstream visibility. Paranormal Activity, REC, Cloverfield, and George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead all made waves, and inspired an influx of like-minded films. Until recently, most people probably didn't realize that found footage was actually a genre, they thought it was just... The Blair Witch Project. So it's understandable that devotees of earlier found footage films are eager to argue against the idea that Blair Witch invented the format. But you see such a humorous hodgepodge of which disparate films are supposed to represent the "one true original idea," it's clear that the origins of found footage can be rather murky.

I've written a couple of vast, expansive entries attempting to outline the sordid origins of found footage -- only to discover another bit of information that rips asunder much of what I had written! So I've settled on compiling a timeline that outlines what I've been able to learn thus far, for anyone who's interested. The information represents what knowledge I have access to and could be subject to revision where suppositions prove false. I cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information, but cursory sleuthing will show that at least the majority of it is easily verifiable.

THE ORIGINS OF FOUND FOOTAGE 

1980 -- February 7th, Cannibal Holocaust is released in Italy. Conventional wisdom holds that this is the first scripted movie to incorporate found footage as a significant plot point. It includes the influential premise of recovering footage left behind by a lost documentary crew. It further incorporates "shaky cam" filming to simulate realism and a "viral" campaign in which the movie was promoted as genuine footage, which later got the filmmakers in hot water when they were tried for murder! Cannibal Holocaust is believed to have been inspired by the "mondo" films of the 1970s that depicted ostensibly real footage of gore and extraordinary events.


Circa 1988 -- Director Dean Alioto releases a low budget movie titled Alien Abduction (later known as "The McPherson Tape"). The film depicts a family being taken by aliens and it is likely the first paranormal-themed found footage film. Unlike Cannibal Holocaust, this film is believed to have been presented entirely in found footage style, which would become a standard among future found footage films. Although the film was later destroyed in a warehouse fire, clips purported to be from the film are featured on a Japanese TV show widely available for viewing on the internet. 


Late 80s, Early 90s -- Various low budget films including Manguden (1988), 84C MoPic (1988) and Man Bites Dog (1992) uniquely utilize the found footage format pioneered by Cannibal Holocaust. These cover such varied topics as serial killing and the Vietnam War.


1992 -- October 31st, on Halloween, BBC1 airs a film titled Ghostwatch. Featuring actual BBC personalities, the premise was a live BBC program broadcast from a haunted house, where they quickly encountered a malevolent spirit. Considered exceedingly frightful, the film was then banned from ever showing again on British TV and it was credited with inspiring a man to commit suicide (that isn't movie content, that really happened). A similar TV-special premise would later be revisited in movies such as The Last Broadcast (1998), The Feed (2010), Grave Encounters (2011) and, to an extent, Atrocious (2010).


1994 -- Work on The Blair Witch Project is purportedly begun.


1997/1998 -- Paranormal-themed found footage films begin appearing, including a purported early version of Strawberry Estates and a remake of Alien Abduction titled Alien Abduction: Incident In Lake County (first broadcast on the TV station UPN on January 20th, 1998). As The Blair Witch Project is believed to have been in the works for years at this point, it is unknown whether these films had "scooped" Blair Witch or genuinely preceded it. Incident In Lake County represents the earliest proven use I can find of the "death bed confession" penultimate scene where the cameraman turns the camera onto themselves and gives their last thoughts. Inclusion of this scene would become very common in found footage films, including The Blair Witch Project.


1999 -- July 30th, The Blair Witch Project is released, becoming a massive commercial success and popularizing the found footage genre. Many films followed in its wake although it would be ten years before new found footage films began finding success comparable to Blair Witch.

--

My Perspective: As far as "who copied who," it's an inconsequential question. I think that in the late 90s, after a variety of notable but mostly small-scale successes for the genre, many different people were vying to hit gold with the format. Similarly to how in 2007 & 2008 a new rash of found footage films suddenly began emerging, the time was right for a great work to appear and as usual there wasn't just one person looking to succeed. 

Strawberry Estates (2001)

Strawberry Estates

Rating: 1 star out of 5. 

Notice: This review contains no substantial spoilers.



A college professor brings in a group to film goings-on at an abandoned asylum which is said to be a hot spot for hauntings. Decrepit, abandoned asylums are an archetypally unsettling affair -- isn't it one of the most common themes for a haunted attraction at Halloween time? I had high hopes for this film. The best found footage movies are based on a simple, universal premise. So, too, is Strawberry Estates, but its similarity to the best found footage films ends very abruptly there. It's a virtually useless film.

It's not the lack of effects that kills Strawberry Estates. The fact that it appears to spend virtually no money at all, is perhaps the most compelling thing about it. No-budget films have a spooky, eerie charm all their own. There's something uniquely volatile about a film that lacks even the most basic frills. Unfortunately, Strawberry Estates brutally squanders this luscious atmosphere.

If you'd like to see a movie that fully utilizes its negative-numbers budget to craft a chilling and compelling narrative, look to The Wicksboro Incident. Strawberry Estates, in great contrast to good movies everywhere, attempts no subtlety, and coerces no scares from the depths of our imagination, or from much of anywhere else.

Response to the film is almost universally negative, and rightfully so. But what makes Strawberry Estates so jarring for me is that it easily could have been a good film, yet the filmmakers blew it. The first half of the movie is meandering and pointless.... which is the perfect set-up for a terrifyingly believable found footage movie, as the action slowly escalates into all-out mayhem. Except for the fact that the second half of Strawberry Estates is every bit as meandering and pointless as the first.

The characters aren't decent human beings, but they're developed enough to keep me interested and I consider the acting very believable. It's not dramatic, it's rather low key, which is a lot more like how most people tend to act in real life than the powerful emotive expressions commonly seen in film. They even engage in a variety of religious discussions which, while devoid of particular intellectual merit, I find to be an intriguing and interesting choice, as well as pretty plausible in context. It's just a shame the film failed to hit on the essential scares of a found footage film, and instead lingers in weakness.

The filmmakers' most asinine offense, is the fact that in a movie about a decrepit, abandoned asylum, there are positively no dimly lit corridors, no pitch black detention chambers. The setting looks like a decent hotel, and it is perpetually well-lit. Virtually no darkness! How foolish do you have to be to flub something so simple up? Now, if there were truly horrific things happening here, maybe the bright light would turn into a cruel mockery, an illusion of safety in a sick torture-game as they are hunted by derelict spirits. But, no, instead we are treated to goofy, half-hearted drawling from the psychic of the group as she pretends to see docile spirits. If they had simply sent us tiptoeing down dark corridors, chasing things that go bump in the night, this could have been a scary and decent film. But apparently a concept so painfully obvious, and a scenario so easy to shoot, was beyond the scope of our filmmakers.

If you're absolutely obsessed with no-budget films, I could recommend Strawberry Estates for a watch. But it's not something you're liable to come back to. The things it accomplishes well are harshly overshadowed by a boring script and an apparent inability to build any atmosphere what-so-ever.

Strawberry Estates is a pretty decent film if you know what to expect, and what not to expect, but if you haven't seen the film before, it's difficult not to be disappointed. I would definitely give the makers of this film a second chance, but first I would tell them to watch The Wicksboro Incident.

The movie also came with a handful of likewise un-budgeted short films, around 20 minutes in length each. Most of them are boring and pointless, but the first one, called Pritchart's Landing... I really enjoyed quite a lot. It's very creepy, and while you're bound to scoff at the effects, this short film is about a thousand times scarier than Strawberry Estates, and I'd even go so far as to recommend it. A student filmmaker goes to the locale of a regional urban legend to shoot a film about the ghost girl who lost her legs in a car crash and therefore severs the legs of passersby. It's a creepy little tale, and I'm fondly reminded of the kind of ghost stories you used to hear when you were a kid. Simple and creepy, that's the realm found footage accomplishes best.

The Wicksboro Incident (2003)

The Wicksboro Incident

Spoiler Warning: This entry contains spoilers about the conclusion and other important plot points of The Wicksboro Incident.

Rating: 4 stars out of 5. 

The Wicksboro Incident is a very bold film in a cornucopia of ways. First, it is quite uncommon to see a found footage film with such a stark and obvious musical score. It's an exceedingly peculiar decision for a film which otherwise would rank among the most realistic found footage movies of all-time -- there is nothing overtly paranormal ever featured in it, what-so-ever. Rather, the film's initial premise of an unseen alien takeover is subtly corroborated when the group becomes ceaselessly pursued by the law. What Wicksboro Incident is, more than anything, is a chase movie. But the paranormal shades make for some interesting nuances.

The film begins with a documentary segment, featuring the typical UFO-believer ideology about unexplained sightings and government conspiracy. Heavily featured is an inventor named Lloyd explaining how in the 1950s he collaborated with the government on a device that detects auras. After working late into the early morning in the fallout shelter that was his workspace, Loyd emerged to find that the entire population of Wicksboro where he worked, had been vaporized into thin air. After 50 years in hiding, he has decided to come out with his story and film a documentary.

Some people comment on believing that it is a genuine documentary for the first 20 or so minutes. Indeed, realism is one category where this movie definitely deserves praise. The audience is led to believe that they are following an eccentric, crazy old man's goose chase until they find his bunker-laboratory in the desert of Texas, and the group of three becomes hunted by the police, the government, and perhaps forces unknown.

The ensuing chase, which makes up the meat of the film, could pass for an action plot. That is, if not for the shaky-cam, shoestring dynamics. This is where the film makes its other great departure from tradition. Many found footage films make use of dark shots and random angles, but none to this extent. Much of the film focuses on random car lights, the flicker of a lighter, and complete, total darkness. This isn't Hollywood-style darkness where there's not supposed to be light but you can see perfectly. This is you staring at a completely blank screen. It's a bold, bold move. But it works ingeniously to tingle the mind's eye, and inspire homegrown fears of mostly your own devise. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't sometimes clutching my arm in fear of what might happen next, even though very little ever did.

With so little on screen, the inclusion of an unabashed soundtrack may be a benefit rather than a detractor, despite harming the realism. We as film fans are trained to fear impending doom based on certain nuances of the accompanying music, and so when we here these sounds and yet see little more than pitch black on the screen, it's left up to our psyche what kind of horrors must be lingering off-screen. While cynics might call this bad filmmaking, it was an intentional tactic from the filmmakers (as explained in the audio commentary), and for fans of found footage, it should work wonders (as it did on me).

As the film draws to a close, it includes the genre's near-requisite "deathbed confession" (which is what I call a penultimate scene in a found footage movie where the camera-holder turns the camera on themselves and gives their last words, typically summing up the situation), but in this case it doesn't include a goodbye, as the cameraman appears confident he will be saved. Evidently he is not, though, as the final bit of movie shows newspaper clippings detailing the obituaries of our three freelance filmmakers. Clearly they have been killed to hide the conspiracy, an alien takeover that is both real and too frightening to think about, according to the now deceased camera-man.

I give it a flawless 5 out of 5 in subtlety, the quintessential fear-inducer of any decent found footage film. It also deserves at least a 4 out of 5 in originality, for its bold choices and uncommon story. It has to lose points, though, for lacking an on-camera paranormal element. Near the end I kept waiting for that moment of true fear to leap out of the frequent pitch blackness; a craft in the sky, a grey arm reaching out to silence the cameraman's life... It's not that I want aliens to prance into bright daylight and do a jig, but I look to The Blair Witch Project for the standard on how to avoid anything specifically impossible, while still providing scary events of questionable origin. Wicksboro has none of that per se', but plenty to play on your imagination until you think you may have seen something.

Skeptically, you might wonder why an alien race has taken over 50 years to overtake the mankind, when evidently they had the technology to vaporize an entire town's population without so much as disturbing the half eaten breakfasts left behind. But the main purpose is that the preposterous premise is both creepy, and wild enough to seem like bullhockey until we find the bunker in the desert; and that's exactly how it's supposed to pan out. Besides, for all we know the vaporization weapon is extremely expensive and can't be used on such a large scale. To nitpick the paranormal is foolhardy when potential limitations are endless for non-existent technology.

Overall Wicksboro Incident is fantastically creepy, and a great work. It's simple, it's pure. It doesn't rank on par with Blair Witch or Paranormal Activity, but it ranks above many of its contemporaries in the found footage genre. I wouldn't recommend watching it with the lights on, though, I imagine it'd greatly diminish the effect of the minimalistic dark-screen camera action.

Fourth Kind (2009)

The Fourth Kind 

Rating: 2 & 1/2 Stars Out of 5

Note: this does NOT contain any spoilers beyond general expository information (like that which you might read on the back of the box, or see in a trailer).

Overview: Effectively creepy at times, but by and large a glitzy Hollywood take on the found footage genre that forgoes much of what makes the style so chilling. It tries a little too hard, and in doing so falls short.

Other than perhaps Jurassic Park when I was five years old, it's hard to imagine a movie I was more anxious for than 2009's Fourth Kind. Aliens have always scared me more than anything, particularly abduction scenarios and the stoic, bone-chilling "greys." Every year has its share of psycho slashers and ghostial hauntings, but I'm always on the lookout for horror movies featuring aliens. Imagine my supreme joy to find that not only was a grey-themed abduction film coming out, it's found footage!

While ghosts tend to dominate, alien abduction has its own tradition within the found footage genre, including its original paranormal incarnation Alien Abduction (The McPherson Tape) and its remake Incident In Lake County, as well as 2003's The Wicksboro Incident.

Fourth Kind is a slick, spooky film about a small town in Alaska where an unprecedentedly large section of the tiny community is being plagued by sleeplessness, incited by the feeling of being watched over by a mysterious owl, which under hypnosis reveals to be something much more sinister. It's a psychological ride. At its best it provides creeping chills and even presents a compelling narrative about the line between self-delusion and how to interpret extraordinary real life events, depending on how you choose to interpret it.

Unfortunately for Fourth Kind, it came out a month after the wide release of Paranormal Activity. That's the found footage equivalent of The Beatles opening for The Turtles. Without Paranormal Activity, it's possible Fourth Kind would have scared the everloving shit out of me. But following such a masterpiece, a severely less well-done film was hard to swallow.

While most good found footage films play up the "this really happened" angle, Fourth Kind takes a rather ham-fisted approach, positing an untimid opening monologue declaring the events to be real, and perplexingly interjecting supposed "real footage" of the events alongside hollwyood recreations (I suppose they wanted to pay twice the number of actors they conceivably needed). Everything about this film is, of course, wholly fictional, in case you were wondering.

Some films convince you they could be real through a strict attention to realism and plausibility.... and then there's Fourth Kind, which shows you preposterous events but has the gall to look you straight in the eye and tell you it's fact. Not the most nuanced approach, to be sure. But it can be scary, in the sense that it's so bold as to almost elicit a "they're hamming it up so much, it has to be real or they'd need to be idiots" reaction. It's an admirable tactic, and I don't blame them for trying.

Occasionally the "real footage" moments are creepy. Yet it would have been more compelling had the whole film been done this way. As is, the scenes of "real" footage tend to be used sparingly and often to little effect. Moments where it's used to decent effect are juxtaposed against moments where it seems to be nothing better than a gimmick. Although a unique touch, the film would have been better without it.

Overall, Fourth Kind provides some serious skin-crawling moments, and excellent thrills. But I'm not a thriller guy. It's splendid as a thriller, but as a descendant of The Blair Witch -- which it is, in the way that it openly purports to contain genuine footage of a real paranormal event -- it falls very thin. And hey, if you don't expect me to lavish praise on shoestring budgets and speak cautiously of big productions, you're reading the wrong blog. I'd recommend this movie to fans of Fire In the Sky, but not Incident In Lake County.

Why Found Footage?

Everyone has their own nightmares. To comment on what is or isn't "objectively" scary would be unthinkably dense. But I saw a comment on the internet that seemed to acely encapsulate the anti-found footage perspective. In regards to Paranormal Activity 2, someone said "A picture in the attic isn't scary."

Doesn't that say it all? There are some for whom monsters and bloody fight scenes are scary, and others for whom something ridiculously simple that seems plausible with sinister implications is scary, and then of course there are various shades in between. One ideology isn't more intelligent than the other. I consider found footage highly nuanced, but it's also extremely simple. I could outline the way to make a found footage masterpiece in about 4 steps, but that doesn't mean 90% of practitioners wouldn't still find a way to screw it up. Doing anything well is considerably difficult. Found footage is just another genre in horror, like slashers or monster movies, with a basic formula, transcendental examples and throwaway works. It's no more complex than a slasher, although for me personally it is far more compelling.

Found footage movies like The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity chill my bones to an extent that no other type of horror movie ever has. For whatever reason, I find suspending disbelief much easier in these kinds of films. And, believe it or not... I find some magic in them. Yes, they're terrifying. But I'm also a stone cold cynic, and to be pulled so deeply into a fantasy world that seems so very real to me, it's like an affirmation that there is some magic in the world after all. It's grim, but strangely beautiful, like an ultimate dark fantasy. And, I mean, hey... it's fun to be scared!

I'm moved by aspects of subtlety, supposed realism. It's good, scary fun. I like movies where the action stays off screen most of the time. I like chilling settings and non-existent budgets and meandering dialogue with a very slow escalation of paranormal foreboding up until a conclusion that defines nothing but strongly hints at death. If this doesn't sound like you, you probably won't agree with my reviews. But at least you can get the low down on some found footage movies, maybe you'll like the ones I review poorly. ;)

Cloverfield (2008)

CLOVERFIELD

Rating: 3 stars out of 5

Note: this does NOT contain any spoilers beyond general expository information (like that which you might read on the back of the box, or see in a trailer).

  

Overview: Not an all-time masterpiece, but an impressive and skillfully executed new take on a long-dwindling genre.

Ten years after Alien Abduction: Incident In Lake County landed, there was Cloverfield, another daring and unique take on the found footage genre. When the teaser trailers for this first appeared, I was enthralled. Found footage, wanton destruction, mystery, what more do I need? I, like many, thought it might be a reinvention of the American Godzilla. Which, conceptually, it pretty much was, and it would make a far more respectable American Godzilla than the one that exists.

Overall it was a brilliant concept, smartly executed. It was exciting, intriguing, daring and shocking. But I also feel it lacked certain elements essential to a perfect found footage film. In a supernatural/horror found footage film, the lack of conventional action is carried over by fear; the foreboding atmosphere, the dread of impending doom, the thoughts running through your head about what despicable entities could be lurking just off-screen. There may not be a lot that's specifically happening, but there's a lot on your mind just the same.

With a monster movie such as Cloverfield, you don't have that fear to carry you through the downtime. Or, at least, I didn't. Okay, so there's impending doom, there're monsters, but I don't feel like the movie was based around fear the way that The Blair Witch Project or Paranormal Activity is. Cloverfield was more action oriented, and I don't feel that it worked out quite as successfully for a subtle-by-nature style of film such as this.

All in all I'd have to rank Cloverfield as another classic found footage film, complete with a successful viral campaign, and as a stunningly original entry into the monster genre. But it's not a movie I will return to often, and I'm not surprised "Cloverfield 2" has yet to materialize nearing four years later, while Paranormal Activity is releasing its third film later this month.

I'm not sure what interesting territory is left for a second film to tread on, other than a more traditional direction that would focus on showing us more about the monster and its attack. All the same, a sequel is still purportedly in the works, and if it materializes I will be anxious to witness it.