The New Oren Peli, "Chernobyl Diaries"

This is NOT a found footage film, but seeing as it relates to Oren Peli, I'm going to review it regardless.

Mr. Oren Peli has had a highly uneven career thus far. He proved himself to be a brilliant visionary with 2007's Paranormal Activity, a subtle and effective horror movie that nearly reinvented the found footage genre; the first blockbuster in that genre since The Blair Witch Project shocked the world. However.... most, if not all, of what he's done outside of the Paranormal Activity franchise (i.e. doing pretty much everything for the first film, and helping to write the second) has been mediocre at best. The found footage TV series The River (created with fellow Paranormal Activity 2 writer Michael R. Perry) was an unfortunate, resounding failure. His genre follow-up to Paranormal Activity, the mysterious Area 51, has been sent through the developmental hell gauntlet for three years and may or may not ever see the light of day. It remains to be seen if Area 51 is simply so awful the studio thinks even the success of Paranormal Activity can't carry it, or it's another case of a masterpiece cluelessly shelved by fickle executives (or my random third theory, that they don't want it to compete against or detract from Paranormal Activity and are holding it back until the franchise dwindles).

As someone who will forever respect and admire Mr. Peli, I am proud to report that Chernobyl Diaries, which Peli wrote, is a fantastic and well-made horror film. It's not amazing or visionary, it's certainly not without flaws, but it is was an excellent watch and is an impressive, effective film.

I wonder if Russia has any disturbing Chernobyl-themed horror films, because in the US our tragic nuclear past has been well-probed for horror. Chernobyl Diaries could easily pass as a particularly inventive remake of The Hills Have Eyes. Both film revolve around tourists trapped inside a car amidst a desolate locale where they are accosted by radioactive cannibals. But where the films differ vastly is in setting. In Chernobyl Diaries, a barren, empty desert is exchanged for an abandoned industrial city. The starkly contrasting setting gives way to a viciously different atmosphere. I haven't seen the original Hills Have Eyes, but Chernobyl Diaries categorically outclasses the 2006 remake. It's scarier, more interesting, and better-shot.

The setting was truly gorgeous and harrowingly spooky. The filming was lusciously dark and claustrophobic, reminiscent of REC with pitch black corridors, plus the disheartening unease of an abandoned city in the dead of night. The plotline is merely so-so, and fairly predictable. But the cinematography makes up for it. If you're anything like me, you will find the scenery chilling to the bone, with deep, complex underground passageways that just go deeper and deeper and deeper. Naturally I would have preferred a bit of a more subtle approach, but coming from me that goes without saying. If you had given this amazing setting to the low-key experts who made The Wicksboro Incident, and they made an equally subtle found footage film out if it, it would probably be the creepiest thing ever made.

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.

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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.